Tag Archives: Circus

With Grue’s help, I seated myself on the intact edge of the destroyed swarmbox, scattering my insects to the walls and ceiling of the room. Grue paced a little, while I eyed Imp and Bitch. My female teammates didn’t look entirely convinced, and I couldn’t blame them. They’d just seen someone who matched my description attacking them. The nighttime darkness and the lack of city lights hadn’t helped, and the obscuring swarm of bugs had helped hide the details from the moment the impostor gave them reason to suspect her.

“What happened?” Grue asked me.

“We arrived at the place he was keeping Dinah, she grabbed my hand, we turned around, and the headlights flashed. Then I was somewhere else.”

“He switched to his highbeams, momentarily. Don’t know about the others, but my eyes had adjusted to the dark. I couldn’t see anything, used my darkness to try to cover us in case he was pulling something, but nothing happened. Turned around and you were fine.”

“I’m not a hundred percent sure of anything. But he didn’t have a bomb waiting to go off when I arrived, so that leaves me with some doubt. He did shoot me, and set the building on fire around me. And he had soldiers waiting to gun me down if I stepped outside.”

“Did he want you to come here, to frame you?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Doesn’t make sense. Just as easy for ‘Skitter’ to disappear with Dinah, leaving you guys angry but still loyal. I think the way he wanted it, I’d die of the gunshot or burn up in a housefire, and he could use the lack of living reporters in Brockton Bay alongside some bribe money for the Travelers to ensure you guys didn’t know what he’d pulled. Maybe something comes out later about me betraying you, to put it in perspective and put any lingering doubts to rest.”

“He teleported you into a burning house, shot you, surrounded you with soldiers. And you escaped,” Imp said.

“Barely.” I touched the knot of metal where the bullet had settled in my armor. “I guess it’s bulletproof after all. I got away because of stuff he wasn’t aware of, mainly. My costume, tactics I’ve been using in the field, the fact I had a gun. Don’t know if Calvert knew about that. Are you okay, Rachel?”

Rachel didn’t respond. Her head was turned my way, and I could imagine her staring, trying to read me. Her hand gripped the chain at Bastard’s neck.

“It wasn’t me,” I told her.

“It wasn’t her,” Grue confirmed. “I saw with her power. That box was controlling the bugs.”

Bitch nodded slowly. I couldn’t see her expression to know whether she was glaring at me or narrowing her eyes behind her mask.

“If you have any doubts,” I said, “You can stay in a position to attack me if something happens. One whistle or one hand signal away from commanding Bastard or Bentley to tear me apart. I hope you won’t leap to any conclusions, but-”

“It’s fine.”

“Are you sure? Because I don’t want there to be any hard feelings or… I don’t want there to be hard feelings.” I’d almost said retaliation, but I’d decided I didn’t want to bring that up.

“It’s fine,” she said, and there was a touch of anger to the words. “This shadow and dagger shit pisses me off.”

“Cloak and dagger,” Imp offered.

Bitch made a low, grunting noise in her throat that fell somewhere between a huff of anger, a belch and a grunt. “The way you acted before, the way that person acted when she shot me and the way you’re acting now, none of it makes sense, and maybe that’s ’cause I’m stupid. But I’m going to handle this my way. Next time someone shoots at me, I kill them. Or I have Bastard eat their hands and feet.”

“You shouldn’t maim people,” I said.

“Says the person who just emptied a gun clip at us,” Imp said. When Grue and I turned her way, she raised her hands, “Kidding. I’m just kidding.”

“…Want me to kill them instead?” Bitch asked.

“No! No. Just… nevermind. But hold back a bit for now. And don’t call yourself stupid. You think in a different way, that’s all.”

She offered a noncommittal grunt in response.

“We should talk rescue plans,” I said. “Calvert invited Tattletale to join him, probably so she wouldn’t tip us off about the body double. That means she’s probably caught. Regent too, since we sent him to look after her. This is the kind of situation we were hoping to avoid by playing along with his grand plan.”

“Having to tackle his full forces to save Tattletale, Regent and Dinah.”

“Right. If we go charging into this, we or one of his hostages will get killed.”

“I could go in,” Imp said. “Get them, walk them out.”

“No. He knows us. He’s anticipated something like this. Probably has for the Travelers, too. He’ll have planned around our powers, with counters in mind for each of us. That means video cameras to keep an eye out for you.”

“Pain in the ass.”

“Indirect attack?” Grue suggested.

“It won’t work if he’s holed up somewhere safe. Not with the countermeasures he’ll have put in place. If he’s in his underground base until this all blows over, then he’ll be impossible to access,” I said. I had to stop to cough.

Nobody chimed in with an answer or idea while I recovered.

I went on. “If he’s in the PRT offices, then we’ll probably have to get past the Travelers, his soldiers, his PRT officers, any countermeasures he’s put in place and any countermeasures the PRT put in place. It’d be a question of staggering out his various lines of defense so the more questionable ones are out of sight of the good guys.”

“And he still has his hostages,” Grue said.

“Fuck it,” I groaned, then I coughed more.

“You need a hospital,” Grue told me.

I shook my head, then regretted it. I felt dizzy. Vaguely nauseous. It was as though simply stopping and letting the adrenaline kick down a notch was letting symptoms emerge. “Can’t. Not now.”

“You’re nearly dead on your feet.”

“I’ll manage,” I said. I turned my eyes to the place I’d been lying while Imp stood over me. “What if I was dead?”

“Hm?”

“Calvert doesn’t have a way to know how this turned out. Do you have phone service?”

Grue reached for his phone, but Imp had hers out first. “Sure.”

“He cut my phone off. I threw it away in case it could be used to track me, or in case it was how he was getting a hold on me with that teleportation device. If he suspected you, wouldn’t he do the same, limit your options?”

“So you think he thinks maybe something happened. Or he’s waiting to see if we bought his ruse.”

“He knows I was in the area. I attacked his men trying to save you guys. He had gunmen and explosives teams ready to wipe you off the map if you caught on to what that impostor was doing. So what happens if you call him and tell him you killed me?”

“He asks us to meet him at one of those secure locations you mentioned, and we can’t refuse without revealing that we know what he tried to pull. And destroying that box might have clued him in anyways.”

“Fuck,” I muttered.

“When the other Skitter disappeared with the girl, how did she do it? Exactly.”

“Teleporting,” I said. “Threw the first flashbang, teleported out, leaving rubble and another flashbang behind.”

“Mm,” he said, “Okay.”

“Why are you so curious about that?”

“Just thinking something through. Give me a second to think.” He pointed at me, “Make sure you’re taking deep breaths in the meantime. Even if it hurts.”

I nodded and did as he asked. For a little while, I ignored my bugs and focused on tallying the damage I’d sustained. My breath wheezed and rattled, my chest hurt every time it or something attached to it moved, and my eyes stung when I opened them. Not that there was any point.

Grue was pacing, breathing hard, while Imp and Bitch stood by. It was a bit of a reversal of the norm. I could sense Bitch scratching around Bastard’s ears, her fingernails digging in deep to get past the areas with armor and bony spikes. Imp was on the other side of the room, leaning against one of the wooden pillars and watching her brother.

“I’m calling him,” Grue announced, still panting a bit. Before any of us could protest, he said, “Quiet.”

I closed my mouth.

He put the phone on speaker. I could hear it ring.

Funny how something so mundane as the ring of a phone could sound so ominous and eerie, given the context of a situation.

“Grue,” It was Calvert’s voice. “What-”

When Grue spoke, his words were growls, barks. “You better not have had anything to do with this, or I swear, this is over. We’re done, gone.”

I could virtually hear Calvert switching mental gears to try to adapt to this. “Slow down and then explain. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Skitter attacked us and then she used your technology to leave the scene. I know you wanted to keep that girl, but going so far as to fucking turn on us-”

“Grue,” Calvert’s voice was hard, firm, “Slow down. It doesn’t make sense that I’d arrange things that way. Why go through the motions of giving my pet to Skitter, only to… you haven’t fully explained what happened. You said she attacked you? Are you sure?”

“Pretty fucking sure, Coil. She shot Rachel and then turned on me. Imp disarmed her. Then she teleported away using the same device you described to us an hour ago.”

“I… I see. Is Rachel all right? And who else was with you, my driver? You’re all unharmed?”

“Your driver went ahead. No, we’re all fine, except for Skitter.”

“You said she teleported away.”

“She didn’t get more than two blocks away. We chased her down and stopped her.”

My eyes widened a bit. I could imagine Calvert’s next words before he spoke them, was already moving.

“Show me. Send a picture through the phone.”

I shifted position so I lay in the depression that Bastard’s front paws had made in the swarm box. It was a scene I had to stage in seconds, using dragonflies and wasps to carry hairs across my mask, moving my hand so my wrist bent at an awkward angle where the metal folded. The final touch was bringing all the bugs from around the swarm box to carpet me and the floor.

Not a half second after I finished, I heard the digitized camera sound.

“I see. That’s quite unfortunate. Where’s Dinah?”

You know where Dinah is.

“I don’t know,” Grue said. “I’m far more interested in hearing how Skitter managed to use your technology to do this.”

“You’re sure?”

“I saw it with my own two eyes,” Grue said. “She threw a flashbang, but light and darkness don’t affect me the way they do others. You know that much.”

Grue was lying, adding an element Calvert wasn’t aware of, to throw him off track. Good.

“I didn’t, believe it or not,” Calvert said. “And I don’t know how she would have gotten access to the controls. One moment. I’ll have to call you right back.”

We stared at each other. Or the others stared and I used my swarm sense to observe. As a group, we were still and quiet for long seconds, the dial tone still blaring.

Grue hit the button.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Being aggressive, keeping him on his heels. If he’s constantly defending himself, he won’t be able to turn things back on us.”

“Except he hung up. He’s going to think through his options and give you an excuse when he’s ready.”

“I didn’t think he’d hang up.”

I frowned. I was thinking back to the meeting I’d had with the school, when my dad had been with me and we’d accused the trio of bullying. Both Emma’s dad and the school had played their little power games.

“It’s a tactic,” I said. “He regains control of the situation by being the one who can call back, and it helps establish the idea of him being an authority figure.”

“Damn,” he said. “Sorry. It made sense in my head, but I didn’t think it through, I’m tired. Didn’t sleep last night. I figured it was better to call sooner than later.”

“It’s okay. Maybe call him back?”

He didn’t get a chance. The phone rang.

“This wasn’t the kind of response I wanted, Coil,” Grue growled into the phone, the second he’d answered.

I heard the beep as he switched it to speaker phone. Calvert was already talking. “- have sequestered Regent in my custody, out of concern that he controlled Victor to have the young man hack into my systems.”

“You and I both know that Victor didn’t have that kind of access, and we didn’t know about your teleportation technology until an hour ago.”

“I fear Skitter may have known, and I’m simply covering my bases. Once we’ve verified what happened and that Regent wasn’t complicit, I’ll release him. You can understand where I’m wanting to be careful, given this turn of events.”

“I don’t understand anything, Coil,” I heard a tremor of emotion in Grue’s voice. “I liked Skitter, and she’s dead. The use of the teleporter says you’re complicit. I want to look you in the eye and believe you weren’t a part of this.”

“We’ll sort this matter out. If you’ll come to my headquarters, we can discuss this.”

“No. Not your headquarters. Not with the possibility you pulled this shit on us. We’ll meet somewhere else. Somewhere open.”

There was a pause. “As you wish. Name a location.”

Grue, this time, was the one caught off guard. Calvert’s response was fast, and Grue clearly didn’t have an area in mind.

A place where we’d be able to set up faster than Calvert, ideally open, not riddled with attack routes and vantage points for his soldiers…

I thought of a spot, and the air caught in my throat as I suppressed a small noise. I almost coughed. I drew the word in the air with my bugs.

“The market, north end,” Grue said, reading it. “You know it?”

“I do. It’s shut down at present.”

“Right. You come with only one small squad of soldiers, bring Tattletale and Regent.”

“If-” Calvert started.

Grue hung up on him. He looked at me, “Authority, right?”

“Right,” I said. But all I could hear was the emotion in his voice when he’d been talking about the idea that I’d been dead. Pretending. Grue wasn’t a guy who showed his emotions, he didn’t strike me as an actor. Hearing that had affected me more than I thought it would. I didn’t want to ask if it was because he really cared or if it was because he’d tapped into something else, some vulnerability that his recent trauma had left open to him.

I coughed lightly. “The market’s a good spot. His people were at the south end of town. It’ll take him a bit to get there, so he won’t be able to stage any kind of ambush.”

“It works. But if we’re meeting him, what are you doing?”

“Staying nearby,” I said. “I’ll wait in the wings. In the meantime, we should see if we can get our hands on something that we could have Bastard maul to the point that it looks like my mutilated remains.”

“There a butcher still in service anywhere?” Grue asked.

“We’ll figure something out,” I replied.

■

The market was almost empty, an expanse of asphalt devoid of cars, surrounded by tall grass. There were still faint marks where the treads and scoops of bulldozers had pushed the dirt and debris to the far side of the lot. Only a few stalls were standing, but the displays were empty.

I felt exposed, naked. I was wearing only my old costume and the built-in makeshift skirt to cover me where the fire had eaten away at the leggings. My utility compartment was the one that had been damaged during our altercation with the Nine, holding the bare essentials, while my new mask and the upper half of my remade costume were presently being worn by the fake we’d made. The sacrifice of the costume hurt, and the process of putting the fake together hadn’t been pretty.

The head, upper body and arms were simply taken from a child’s mannequin we’d salvaged from the inside of a store display and stuffed into the top of my costume. To get the meat for the torn midsection, I’d had to use my bugs to root out and kill a raccoon from the bins of a dumpster. I’d cut it open and tied the entrails to the base of the mannequin’s torso with my spiders. A wig that vaguely matched my own hair was simply bound to the head. We soaked the body, the wig in particular, with the blood of the dead raccoon.

Bentley’s tail wagged as he carried the thing delicately in his heavy jaws, one arm and a bloody mess of hair dangling from the left side of his mouth, raccoon intestines hanging out the other.

I headed into the tall grass and hunkered down. Volumes of insects and arachnids that I’d picked up during our trek to the market settled around me, hidden at the base of the grass.

Adrenaline kept me awake, despite the fatigue that I was experiencing. It had been an intense few days, an intense few weeks, with minimal chance to rest. My body was probably struggling to heal, and draining what little reserves I had remaining. Still, I wasn’t about to doze off.

Calvert arrived after ten or fifteen minutes, pulling up with one armored van. All in all, he had only four soldiers with him. He walked within twenty feet of me as he crossed the tall grass. I was aware of his footsteps crushing my bugs as he passed over the swarm.

“I’d suggest my man look over the body, verify that it was her, but I suppose there’s no point trying.”

“Bentley wouldn’t let you get that close to his treat,” Bitch said.

Bentley growled, as if he understood the words and wanted to make it absolutely clear.

“Don’t talk about her like that,” Grue said. “Calling her a treat?”

“She betrayed us,” Imp said. “Why do you care?”

“Enough,” Calvert said, his voice hard. “Enough bickering. My time is valuable, and I’m not willing to waste it on entertaining this ruse.”

I didn’t have many bugs deployed on my allies or on Calvert, but I could still feel the others tense in surprise.

“Yes, I know. I commend you for trying, I might have believed you, but I do have other resources on hand.”

“Then-” Grue started.

“Ah, bup bup,” Calvert raised a hand, “I was talking. As I was saying, I have other resources available. I have a small cadre of supervillains, a small group of heroes, all the resources of the PRT and PRT computer systems, and all of their tools.”

He snapped his fingers, and soldiers began to teleport down to the edges of the market. Most were positioned so that the Undersiders would have to run off the edge of the pavement, over the grass and into the water if they wanted to get away. Surrounding a target while holding guns only promised to get people shot. The effect, as it was, was good enough.

The Travelers teleported in behind Calvert, followed by Chariot, Circus, Über and Leet, and a few of his lieutenants. People in suits. One held a laptop while the other typed on it.

Every gun, tinker made or otherwise, was pointed at my teammates.

Another gun pressed against the back of my head. Soldiers had teleported in behind me.

I felt despair sweep through me. No. Too many. Didn’t think he could teleport this many in.

The gun barrel prodded me, and I stood. I walked with the gun pressed between my shoulderblades, just above the spot where my utility compartment hung.

“Skitter. How nice of you to join us.”

“Cut the fake civility,” I said. “Where are our teammates?”

“Regent and Tattletale are safe and locked up, rest assured. I must say, I’m quite disappointed. I really had hoped this would work out, and the loss of the Undersiders sets me back by weeks or months in the grand scheme of my plan. Imp, you can cease trying to run. My men have cameras on you,” Calvert gestured toward the laptop.

Imp moved her mask to spit on the ground, just to my right. It was a bit of a shock to find her standing there.

“Farewell, Under-“

“Wait.” I said. Raising my voice made me cough.

“I don’t see any point to waiting.”

I hurried to recover and speak before he could give the order. “Dead man’s switch.”

Calvert sighed. “Ah. You are irritating, you know? On more than one occasion, I know, you’ve argued for the sake of the greater good. I’ve viewed the recordings the PRT has of your appearances at major events and I’ve come to know you fairly well. It’s rather hypocritical that you’re now working so hard to fight against the greater good.”

“Against your rule.”

“Essentially so. If you simply would have died quietly, the Undersiders wouldn’t have been stirred to rebellion, I could have established a peace we haven’t seen since the day Scion arrived and everyone involved here could have walked away happier and healthier. Your friends included.”

“Tattletale excepted,” I responded.

“Tattletale excepted, I admit. Too dangerous to be left unchecked. A shame. Now, you were saying?”

“I arranged a dead man’s switch. Kind of. Unless one of my subordinates receives a message from me every twenty minutes, she’ll mass-send emails to everyone important and even a few unimportant people.”

“Detailing the true nature of Thomas Calvert, I suspect?”

“Yeah.”

“I hate to break it to you, dear Skitter, but this isn’t enough leverage for me to let you walk away.”

I turned my head in the direction of my teammates. With my power, I noted their presence. Grue, Imp, Bitch, her dog.

“None of us?” I asked.

“No. I’m more confident in my ability to handle the chaos that any email creates than I am in my ability to get you and your teammates under my thumb again.”

“Okay,” I said. I could feel sweat running cold down the back of my neck. “Then I have a few questions, and a couple of requests. Satisfy that, and I can disable the dead man’s switch.”

“The requests first, if you please.”

“Dinah goes free when you’re done. You don’t keep her forever.”

“Agreed.”

“My dad, you don’t touch him.”

“I haven’t and I won’t have reason to.”

“And you take care of Rachel’s dogs.”

Calvert nodded, but I could sense his patience was running out.

“You do what you can to stop Jack from doing what he can to end the world. If you have capes at your disposal, you give them some job related to that. To stopping it.”

“Fine. Is that it?”

“If none of us here get to live, at least promise Tattletale gets to.”

“Fine. That can be arranged.”

“I’ll need to see her, to verify she’s okay. I get that you can’t prove you haven’t gone after my dad in retaliation for earlier, but you can bring her here.”

Calvert nodded at Chariot, who pressed a button on his wrist.

Tattletale appeared in a flash of light, arms bound behind her, legs shackled. She wore headgear that had her blindfolded and gagged. I couldn’t quite tell, but it looked like the ears were plugged too.

“Satisfied?” Calvert asked.

“No. It could be a body double, like you arranged for me. I’d like to confirm with her.”

“No. The restraints are in place for a reason.”

“Then it’s a body double,” I said. “And I’ll let the timer run down on this damaging piece of email.”

“I’m willing to run that risk.”

“Use your power,” I told him. “I’m going to say the words rose-L. She’ll reply with something green, followed by the letter A.”

“I’m familiar with your codes.”

“Great. And if she doesn’t, shoot us. If there’s a problem, go with your other world.”

“You know how my power works?” Calvert sighed. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised in the end, with the name she chose. No.”

“It’s all I’m asking for. You can send your computer experts to the destination I name, they’ll check the computer memory to verify no messages were sent, check the phones of everyone on my call history that you don’t already know, and then you’ll know you’re in the clear. That’s what I’m offering you in exchange for the assurance that at least Tattletale will get to live. Peace of mind.”

“I could kill your liaison, you realize. She’s a loose end.”

I thought of Charlotte, hoped I wouldn’t regret getting her involved. “I hope you won’t. All I’ve told her is that she should await my message and send the file I composed if she doesn’t hear from me regularly. I hope you’ll let Tattletale and my civilian live, but if you won’t, if you break your word, I guess I’ll have to live with you looking a little worse in the eyes of the people who work for you. Like the Travelers.”

“I didn’t do anything. He was the one who turned on us first,” I protested.

I sensed Trickster turn Calvert’s way.

Calvert sighed audibly. “As Skitter knows about my power and ever so kindly revealed the broad strokes of it to everyone in earshot, I suppose there’s no loss in explaining. I tortured one member of the Undersiders for information, in another world, days ago. They revealed that you were plotting to turn on me if I refused to release Dinah. I cannot afford to release her, so my hand was forced.”

“So it’s our fault?” Imp asked.

“Ultimately, yes.”

“How did you make those body doubles? Genesis?”

“The old-fashioned way. The one that replaced you was a Sudanese child soldier. I was preparing for the eventuality of your betrayal since the day after Leviathan attacked and your… wobbly allegiances became perfectly clear. It’s amusing, but the files you stole from the PRT offices after rejoining the Undersiders supplied much of the video footage my hired experts used to coach her in the particulars of how you move and speak. When you went to convince the Mayor of our way of thinking, Trickster carried the devices Leet designed to record the particular signals you use to command your bugs.”

“Which is how you built the swarm box.”

“The Famine Engine,” Leet said.

“Whatever.”

“Any further questions?”

“Why didn’t you drop me on top of a bomb?”

“An unfortunate side effect of Leet’s power. Leet believes it was the proximity to the bomb or the particular signature of the vat of acid that made it so likely to occur, but with my power I observed that it wasn’t merely a chance that the teleportation would fail and your well-trained body double would be caught instead, but a surety. No less than twelve tries with the variables changed slightly. Leet’s power sabotages him, it seems.”

“Is that Leet’s passenger at work?”

“Passenger? Ah, that’s what Bonesaw calls the agents. Yes, I suppose that might be the case. In any event, we nearly ran out of time before verifying that guns, fire and alcohol wouldn’t skew his power. Whatever the cause of the errors was.”

“Okay. So I don’t suppose you want to let me confirm it’s Tattletale and tell you who to contact to cancel the dead man’s switch?”

“No.”

“You’ve been careful every step of the way. Thinking five steps ahead, amassing resources, amassing top-notch underlings, getting us working for you, getting the Travelers. I’m surprised you’re willing to let things go ass-backwards when you’re so close to tying up the last loose end.”

“It’s precisely because I’m careful that I’m not willing to let Tattletale open her mouth and speak.”

“You’re still pretending it’s Tattletale,” I said.

“It is. I had no reason to arrange a body double for her as I did for you.”

“You had every reason. Like you said, you didn’t trust her, you couldn’t let her work unchecked, and it would have been too unusual if the two members of the Undersiders that posed the biggest threat to your goals happened to disappear at once.”

Calvert shook his head and touched fingers to his forehead, as if exasperated. “Your underling and Tattletale can live. That’s all I’m willing to offer. You’ll have to take my word on both points”

“Your word is worth nothing,” Bitch spat the words.

Calvert reacted as if he’d been slapped.

“You promised me safety, security, so long as I joined this team. I’ve never been less safe, less secure. Everybody lies through their teeth. Maybe there’s a couple of them I can stand anyways, but they’re still liars, they’ve made me a liar, and you’re the worst liar of them all. It’s fitting you wear a snake on your costume.”

“Enough,” Calvert said, “Anything more and I’ll order my men to shoot you.”

“Shoot her and you’ll never get the info you need from me,” I said.

“You’re a cheat, Coil!” Bitch barked.

“I’ll have your dogs shot if you say another word,” Calvert said.

Bitch fell silent.

Silence reigned for long seconds. I was aware of my bugs, knew that I couldn’t have them attack without us getting shot. I knew my armor was bulletproof, Bitch’s armored jacket was the same way, but the thinner fabric, or a bullet through the lens or eyehole of a mask? There were a lot of soldiers here. Even if the suits could stop the bullets from penetrating, we could be pulverized anyways.

I heard a wave crash against the shore, not far away. Long seconds passed.

“If it settles the matter, then fine,” Calvert said. He signaled Chariot.

Another Tattletale appeared. She dropped to her knees the second she materialized. She wore a similar headset and bindings.

“Free her mouth and one ear. Be ready to gag her again the second she speaks.”

One of his soldiers approached the kneeling Tattletale. He undid the gag and freed her ear of the plug that was held in place with wire.

“Rose-L,” I called out.

“Stringbean-A,” she replied. She grunted as the soldier forced the gag back into her mouth.

“She gets to live,” I told Calvert. “If nothing else, you guys are going to need her help to figure out how Jack Slash ends the world in twenty-three months.”

“It’s amusing,” Calvert said, “That you keep asking me for things I was already prepared to do. You wanted me to improve the city, to restore it to a working state. Already planned. And this? Killing Tattletale was never in the cards. I intend to keep her like I do my pet. Her power will be invaluable. Rest assured, I will offer every bit of assistance I can when the end of the world approaches.”

“I suppose it was too much to expect that you’d let her go,” I said. My heart pounded in my chest. I wasn’t exactly feeling top-notch, so simply standing was feeling like a bit of a challenge. Fighting back, acting? No. No use. “Her name is Charlotte. She’s staying in the red brick house a block to the east of my dad’s place. She has a laptop, but she doesn’t know what I put on it.”

“Very well. Men? Ready-“

“-You’re not going to check?”

“Aim…”

“Calvert!” I said, “Coil!”

“Fire.”

The sound of the gunshots was deafening, debilitating when I was already missing my sense of sight, my bugs not present enough to give me a sense of the surroundings. I sensed Grue get hit, then Bentley… I took one in the stomach and folded over.

When the smoke cleared, for lack of a better term, we were still standing. There was the sound of a few isolated scuffles in the ranks of the soldiers. My bugs moved to the ends of gun barrels and to the soldiers themselves, noting their postures and positions.

Roughly half of the soldiers that surrounded us were holding the other half hostage. A few had managed to get shots off, but a quick feel-around with my bugs verified that nobody had been hurt enough to be knocked to the ground. Most of the bullets had gone over our heads.

One of the soldiers approached Tattletale and began undoing the restrictive binding. She wobbled slightly as she stood, working her jaw in the absence of the gag.

“Glad to see the stringbean plan worked out in the end,” she said. “Those of you I haven’t been in contact with, please hear me out. I’m paying twice what Calvert is for a year’s salary, and I’m paying it all upfront. Look to the other team captains if you don’t believe me. Fish, Minor, Richards, Meck, I’ve talked to them, and they’ve agreed.”

There was a slight shift in the tension among the soldiers. The ones at gunpoint began slowly lowering their weapons, and the ones holding them there similarly let it calm a notch.

“Lies,” Calvert said. There was an uncharacteristic degree of emotion in his voice. “I’ve tracked your funding. I know exactly how much money you have.”

“Not exactly. See, I revealed this to my team, just a little while ago, but I’ve sort of been skimming.”

“From me?”

“A bit. Not as much as you’d think. You keep good accounts. But our targets? For sure. Like, we go rob the Brockton Bay central bank, and maybe I skip off for five minutes to go visit the CEO’s room, use his computer to get access to more funds, and shift them into a personal account. Or I keep a few of the more valuable pieces of paperwork, or I pocket something expensive during a job. Funny thing about a power like mine, it helps me figure out what I can get away with.”

“You haven’t taken enough to pay twice what I can.”

“You’d be surprised. And some of your assets are in a position to be picked up by yours truly. Safe deposit boxes and safes don’t mean much against me. So that’s a bit more funding of yours that I can borrow to pay these guys. A year up front, and I’m not asking them to do a single thing. Most of them, anyways. I’m just asking that they ship out of Brockton Bay or they stay on the down-low.”“I’ll pay triple,” Calvert said.

“You can’t pay triple,” Tattletale said, stretching as the chains around her wrists and ankles were undone. “You’ve dented your coffers too much with the city revitalization. Didn’t help that you paid such an exorbitant sum to the Dragonslayers for the information they were offering.”

“That was your idea.”

“Yeah,” Tattletale said. “You were desperate enough to deal with the Dragon threat before your big show at the debate that you didn’t make too big an issue of it. Either way, you forgot the cardinal rule of employing mercenaries. They follow the person with the money.”

“I didn’t forget,” Calvert said, “I had that in mind every step of the way. I was exceedingly careful of how much funding I provided.”

“Okay,” Tattletale sounded almost chirpy. “But you didn’t account for the possibility that I was picking up as much on my own as I was.”

Calvert made a noise that was a borderline snarl.

“Undersiders,” Trickster said. “This goes no further. Call it a stalemate, but we need his assistance.”

“Calvert’s lying, you know,” Tattletale said. “He can maybe help you, but he can’t help Noelle. None of the plans he’s been talking about will work, and he knows they won’t work. He wants Noelle for entirely different reasons. He thinks he can get her on a leash, so he’s got firepower even if he gets rid of the supervillains working under him. A threat that only the great PRT leader Thomas Calvert can address.”

“I’d rather see the truth of that for myself. You touch him and we kill you.”

“You guys aren’t wearing the same kind of durable costume we are,” Tattletale said. “If you want to make a point of it, my soldiers can gun you down.”

“I can swap your group with mine the second the gunshots happen,” Trickster replied, unfazed. “You don’t want to do that.”

I tried to speak, coughed once instead. When I finally had my voice, I said, “Ballistic. Sundancer. Any other Traveler with doubts, I know you guys aren’t happy with the status quo. If you want to stop running, stop moving constantly and move to Brockton Bay permanently, we’ll have you. We need you, even.”

A long pause stretched out, then Ballistic stepped forward.

“Hey, man,” Trickster said. “No.”

“I’m done. This was a doomed quest from the start,” Ballistic said. He stopped at Grue’s side, turned around to face his teammates.

“Sundancer?” I asked. “You said before that you were lonely, that all of this was too intense for you. Even the stuff I’ve done, it didn’t sit right with you. I get that. Don’t you want to stop? To say goodbye to this life?”

Trickster looked at Sundancer, “Mars.”

She shook her head. “No. No, Skitter. I’m staying. Don’t have another choice.”

“Genesis?”

She was in the form of a girl, but wore a simple mask. “Someone’s got to stay and be a real leader to this team. No. I’m standing by Trickster.”

“Teleport me to safety,” Calvert said. “Escort me away, and everything I have is yours.”

“Everything you have is mine already,” Tattletale cut in. “You’ve been dethroned, C-man. I’m going to rule as the mastermind behind the scene in Brockton Bay, organize the territories, pay the bills. My partners will see to the territories themselves. I suppose I won’t be head of the PRT, but I’m suspicious we’ll be able to work out a truce of sorts with the good guys. Hopefully we’ll get someone more sensible than Piggot and less shady than you.”

“Trickster,” Calvert said. “I can put you in touch with the woman who can cure her. Someone who knows as much or more about Parahumans than anyone on the planet. It won’t be free, but I can subsidize the costs. But I have to be alive to-“

Trickster collapsed to the ground. Sundancer and Genesis turned, confused, and Ballistic caught Genesis with a spray of pellets. She dissipated into gory wisps of whatever substance formed her body.

Sundancer was only just creating her sun when she collapsed as well. I could see Imp bending over, prodding the bodies. Über, Leet and Chariot backed away as guns turned to point at them.

“Anyone who shoots one of the Undersiders will receive one million dollars!” Calvert shouted.

I waited for the inevitable bullet. It didn’t come.

“Skitter and I had a little talk,” Tattletale said. “Way back when the city had been freshly sieged by the Endbringer and rejoining the team wasn’t even a consideration. I raised the idea of going after you, of taking you down. We knew that if you were going to let down your guard, if you were going to slip up at all, it would be when you were closest to achieving your goals.”

Calvert only glared.

“If you made any one mistake, it was keeping me at your base towards the end of the fiasco with the Nine. The problem with keeping your friends close and your enemies closer? It puts your enemies in the midst of your friends, so they can discuss better means of payment with the right team captains. Or they can maybe arrange to put something in Noelle’s vault during one of the feeding times, a few fire alarms with a low battery, tucked in where the door meets the wall. Irritate her, so she’s awake that much more, and she then costs you sleep.”

“That metaphor fell apart,” Imp commented.

Tattletale shrugged. “Not so much a metaphor, but I got off track.”

“Pettiness,” Calvert said.

“Strategic. Lots of little things add up. Seeding doubts. Making you second guess plans. Keep you up at night wondering, planning just a bit more, in both your realities. You were too focused on the big picture, on the thing I could find out, keeping me off-balance, that you missed out on my ability to see the little things, to exploit them. And it wore on you. You didn’t realize how much, but it did, and maybe that’s why you were that much more susceptible to making the critical mistake here.”

“Damn you,” Calvert said.

“But you made the mistake we needed you to make, using your power here, while you were talking to us. There’s no escape routes, now. The only loyalty you have is bought with coin, and I have more cash than you do.”

“Then send me to the Birdcage and be done with it,” Calvert said.

“To jail?” Tattletale asked. “No, no no no. I know you have contingency plans. Arrangements. We send you to prison and someone breaks you out before you get there.”

I took a step forward, then made myself take another.

“It doesn’t have to be you,” Tattletale told me.

“No,” I told her. “I think it does.”

Calvert turned my way, let his head sink back so it rested against the ground. “So it comes down to this.”

I thought of the countless lives I’d put at risk, if not directly, then indirectly: the ABB blowing up parts of the city, the ensuing gang war, Purity leveling buildings because she blamed us for the loss of her daughter.

There was the fat superhero I’d left to die when the tidal wave was incoming. I recalled leaving the dying Merchant to bleed out when I’d rescued Bryce from the merchant’s festival of blood. There were the people in my territory, the old doctor who’d had her throat cut because I hadn’t realized Mannequin was close until it was too late. The gas attack that killed nearly twenty people and the fires Burnscar had set in my territory, both because I’d provoked them and failed to consider how readily they’d go after the vulnerable point that was all the people I’d been trying to protect.

I remembered trying to kill Mannequin with grenades, going all-out in attempting to end a man’s life. A madman, a monster, but it was what it was.

And, much more recently, there was the case of me bringing Triumph so close to death that he’d needed life support.

I’d come to terms with so much of that by telling myself it was leading to this. I’d known deep down it would happen. That my fight against Calvert would have to end here.

I walked forward until Calvert was beneath me. I drew my gun, checked there was ammo in the clip.

“You’re not a killer,” Calvert said.

“No…” I replied. I couldn’t see, so I screwed my eyes closed, felt the moisture of tears threatening to spill forth. I took in a deep breath.

“…But I suppose, in a roundabout way, you made me into one,” I finished. I aimed the gun and fired.

The gun dropped from my hand as the recoil jarred it. It clattered to the pavement. It was quiet enough that I could only hear the ocean water crashing against the shore, just off the beach.

As an afterthought, I kicked the gun a distance away from where Calvert lay. Not that there was much point. I tried to learn from my mistakes.

I felt Tattletale’s arm settle around my shoulders. “We’re done. This is over.”

“The Travelers will be pissed. I can’t- we can’t kill them,” I said.

“We won’t. They’ll move on. They have no more reason to stay.”

Grue stepped around my left side, bent down, took Calvert’s cell phone from the man’s belt and then tossed it to Tattletale. As Tattletale withdrew her arm from my shoulders, he stepped forward to give me a hug. “Let’s go.”

I nodded into his shoulder.

We turned away. With my swarm sense I was able to recognize Minor, Tattletale’s man, helmetless, opening the doors of one van for us. I took a seat.

It wasn’t Tattletale or Grue that sat down beside me, but Rachel. She took my hand in hers, held it fiercely. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, so I simply accepted it.

■

We stopped at Coil’s underground base. Tattletale’s underground base. It was a relief to escape the silence of the van, surreal to be in the dim noise of downtown again. Much of the area still lacked power, but there were the noises of the occasional car, of people clamoring on the bottom floor of an apartment building. City noises.

“You okay?” Grue asked.

“More bothered by the fact that I’m not bothered,” I said. I knew how little sense I was making, but I didn’t feel like elaborating.

“But you’re okay?”

I nodded, coughed fiercely for a few seconds.

“Our next stop after this is the hospital.”

“Okay,” I agreed.

As it had been at sunset, the base was empty. The metal walkway sang with my footsteps as I walked to the far end of the complex. I stopped at a door without a handle.

“Here,” Tattletale said. She held Calvert’s cell phone. Held it up and pressed a sequence of buttons.

The door clicked open. I forced my fingers into the gap and hauled it open. Heavy and metal.

There was one more door, one with a key lock. Tattletale stepped over to the desk and got the key, opened it.

Dinah was inside with an unassuming man in a turtleneck sweater and corduroy pants.

“Go,” Tattletale told the man. “Your boss is dead. Just go.”

He fled.

“I’m going to get Regent,” she said. “Think we’ll leave Shatterbird in her soundproof cage for now, just to be safe.”

I nodded absently. I was holding on to Grue for support, watched as Dinah stood from the bed and slowly approached.

Her voice was barely above a whisper as she stared down at the ground between us, “I’ve been waiting for this for so very long.”

It didn’t sound like an accusation. More the words of someone who had been forced to watch the clock for days, weeks, months. Anticipating a possible moment that might never come.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry it took so long.”

She shook her head, “I’m the one who’s sorry, you were trying hard and I set you up, so you’d go the way where your friends tried to kill you. I shouldn’t have-“

“Hey, it’s okay. It offered us the best chances in the end, right?”

She bobbed her head in a nod.

A second later, she was running to me, wrapping her arms around my midsection. I winced in pain as her forehead banged against my chest.

“Medical care,” Grue said.

“For both of us,” I replied. “Dinah and me.”

“Yeah.”

As a trio, we stepped out onto the walkway, where Tattletale and Regent should have been waiting.

But I could see Regent at the end of the walkway, and Tattletale wasn’t with him. She was hurrying down the spiral stairs just to Regent’s left.

I leaned over the walkway, as much as I was able with the pain in my chest and Dinah clinging to my midsection. My eyes went wide. A moment later, I was hurrying after Tattletale, holding Dinah’s hand in one of my own and Grue’s elbow in the other.

We stopped when we reached Tattletale. She stood facing the vault door. The one that was used to seal Noelle within.

There were two vault doors, one set behind the other, and both were ruined, the one closest to us nearly folded in half, hanging by one hinge.

“A final act of spite,” Tattletale said. She looked at the phone in her hand. “He made sure she heard our conversation.”

“You didn’t notice?”

“He was using his ability to create alternate worlds to throw my power for a bit of a loop. I was more focused on the possibility that he had a loyal soldier in the ranks or a sniper waiting in the distance, ready to take a shot at one of us.”

The odor that wafted from the open vault was like sweat and rotten meat. It was dark. Nothing about it gave the sense of a teenage girl’s living space.

“On a scale of one to ten,” I asked, “Just how bad is this?”

“Let me answer your question with another question,” Tattletale said. “You think we could convince the PRT to turn on the air raid sirens?”

I pushed open the rusted metal door that marked the first real barrier to entry for Coil’s underground base. It was unassuming, if secure, easy to ignore for anyone who happened to find their way underground. It swung open without resistance; unlocked.

Every door was unlocked as I made my way through the series of checkpoints and gates. There were no guards, and the cameras in the final room before I entered the base proper didn’t move to track my movements.

I pushed on the final door and let it swing open. The base was empty. Except empty wasn’t exactly the right word. It had been cleared out.

The on-duty squads of soldiers were gone, as were the trucks, weapons, supplies and furniture. The entire ground floor was desolate, with clean patches in the dust where furniture and crates had been.

In groups big enough for me to get full coverage of the area, my swarms took turns roving over my surroundings. They couldn’t pass through closed doors, but they gave me a sense of my surroundings that my eyes couldn’t. The results were almost the inverse of what I might expect from my eyesight. There was no grasp of color, beyond what I could guess from the various clues I got from my other senses, but I had a keen sense of textures. Where my eyes would have been capable of focusing on one thing at a time, my swarm-sense gave me the ability to pull together complete mental pictures from a thousand different points of focus. I could ignore line of sight, sensing around objects, and even though my bugs’ senses translated poorly, the sum total of their awareness gave me a sense of the little things, in addition to the big picture. I could sense where the air currents were traveling and the force with which they moved, the thickness of the dust in one area versus another, and where temperatures where higher, if even by a fraction.

None of this was new, exactly. I’d always been aware of it to some small degree, but my core senses had always been there as regular, reliable fallback. I’d never researched the subject, but reports seemed conflicting when it came to the topic of blindness making other senses sharper. With only half of a day’s experience, I was beginning to think that maybe it didn’t improve my other senses, but seemed to free up the semi-conscious, semi-unconscious intake that my eyes typically used as my dominant sense. The brainpower that was usually allocated to idle glances, comparing and contrasting, or just taking in ambient sights while my thoughts were preoccupied with other things? It was freed up to be used for listening and my swarm-sense.

The Travelers were here, I noted. I wasn’t startled to note their presence, but I was somewhat surprised. They’d gathered in one room above the vault that Noelle was presumably being kept in. They’d noticed the bugs and were venturing outside onto the walkway. I met them halfway between their apartment and the entrance.

They were in civilian wear. Trickster and Ballistic were in regular shirts, jeans and shoes, but Sundancer was wearing what I took to be pyjamas, her hair tied back in a bun. Genesis was in her chair, a blanket on her lap, with Oliver standing just behind her.

“Skitter,” Trickster said, “You’re here alone?”

“My teammates are upstairs. We wanted to have words with Coil, but he wasn’t free to talk until sundown, so we’ve been killing time and waiting around. There’s still a bit of time, I sensed some movement down here, I needed to stretch my legs to keep my injuries from earlier today from stiffening up, so I decided to take a bit of a walk.”

“And they’re staying put?” Ballistic asked.

“I can signal them in a heartbeat if I have to,” I responded.

“Just saying, but you know Coil’s dead, right?” Trickster asked.

“I saw it happen,” I answered him. I chose my words carefully, “So I have a very good idea of how dead the man is.”

There was just a touch of hostility here. I turned my head to face the two girls, using my bugs to figure out the orientation so I could appear to be looking at Sundancer and Genesis. The two of them were, I figured, the closest thing to allies that I had among the Travelers. That wasn’t to say I was on good terms with them; Sundancer was especially wary of me and had been since I’d carved out Lung’s eyes, and Genesis had been a little weird in how she related to me when I’d delivered Trickster to her at the mayor’s house. Part of that might have been a reflection or a response to my own paranoia, where I’d thought they were planning to kill me. Either way, they hadn’t given me the impression of dislike or hostility to quite the same degree that I was seeing with Trickster and Ballistic right now.

This was where my current inability to see was hurting me. I couldn’t read their expressions or body language, and even though my bugs were giving me a sense of how they were standing and where their head, arm and legs were positioned, I didn’t have that innate human ability to instantaneously assess and process those details. Time and effort spent trying to figure it out was taken away from my ability to plan and follow the conversation. It was sort of like talking to an answering machine; I was left trying to hold up my end of a conversation without the ability to assess what the person on the other end was making of it. End result? I was left there, silent, while none of the Travelers were volunteering anything.

“If you’re done checking up on us, or visiting, whatever you want to call it,” Trickster said, “You could go. Your duty’s done, you’ve paid your respects to the other team while you’re in their territory.”

That’s something we’re supposed to do?

“I don’t want us to be enemies,” I said.

“We’re not,” Trickster replied, but his tone was far from friendly. “We’re on the same side.”

“But?” I asked. “It sounds like there’s more to that.”

“We’re not friends, Skitter. Let’s not pretend like we are. You’ve got your goals, we have ours. You want to work together to tackle a situation like the Dragon thing? Fine. Great. You want to backdoor Ballistic, going to the boss to recruit that cape he was trying to take down? Hey, that’s fine too.”

Ballistic folded his arms.

Trickster went on, “Really. We’re doing what we have to do in order to make this thing work. I don’t love what you pulled, I’m not jumping for glee, but I get it.”

“So we’re business associates, but not friends.”

“Succinctly put.”

“There has to be more common ground there. We can’t meet, share a box of donuts and talk about ways to mutually benefit our territories?”

“The fact that you have to ask that is a pretty good indication of how clueless you are about this. Let’s count the ways. One, I don’t give a ratfuck about my territory or the people in it. None of us do.”

I could feel Sundancer turning slightly away from him. Was there disagreement there?

“Two,” he continued, “We don’t plan to be here much longer anyways. Either Coil fulfills his end of the bargain and we’re out of this hellhole, or he doesn’t and we take a hike anyways. Take our chances elsewhere.”

I could remember how Ballistic had talked about his frustration with the group, the idea that he might stick with this gig regardless of what Trickster and the others did. If I brought it up, would it refocus the discussion to the point that Trickster wasn’t opposing me, in an abstract sense, or would it derail it with the ensuing drama?

I kept my mouth shut, and I was sort of glad that I couldn’t see, or I might have given in to my impulse to glance at Ballistic and give something away.

Maybe it wasn’t worth worrying about. I was wearing my full costume, including the additional pieces I’d accumulated over time; I wore the tattered cape, the ragged semi-dress over my leggings, and a heavy carpet of bugs clung to the black fabric and armor panels. My goggles would hide my eyes. Nobody would see any tell, if I could see, and I doubted they’d notice I was essentially blind.

Trickster took my silence for an excuse to go on, “Three, again, there’s no common ground to be found, and I’m not interested in hunting for it. There’s two things I want in this world, and being part of Coil’s thing was my way to get those things. You were useful only as far as you helped make Coil’s thing work, and that’s over now. To put it bluntly, you don’t have anything to offer me.”

“I get the picture,” I told him, cutting him off before he could continue. “Okay. Friendship’s off the table. Even a friendly business relationship would be pushing it.”

He nodded once.

I sighed a little. “Okay. That said, as one local warlord to another, I’d like to extend an invitation. We’re going to talk to Coil, and I’m saying you’re free to come.”

“Coil’s dead,” Ballistic made the words a drawl.

That was getting old fast. “Do we really have to maintain this charade?”

“Coil went to a lot of effort in putting together his grand plan. He died in a blaze of glory and violence, just like he wanted. Do you really want to spoil that by going on about how he’s still alive?”

“Like you said,” I retorted, “We’re on the same side. If you didn’t know, you’d be more upset than you are now. Why pretend he’s dead when he’s alive? Especially when it’s getting in the way of the larger conversation about the man and my invitation to come hear what he has to say?”

Trickster leaned against a wall and fumbled in one pocket for a cigarette. “You mean outside of the possibility that you’re wired and my saying the wrong thing could out him? Whatever. I don’t have anything to say to him that I haven’t already said. Maybe you aren’t getting the point. We went out of our way to help you once, rescuing Grue, and it nearly got us carved up by Bonesaw.”

Your plan, I thought.

He went on, “I don’t care about the Undersiders. I don’t care if you get a hundred trillion dollars and wind up kings of the planet, and I don’t care if Coil kills you. We’ve wrapped up our business with Coil, and that’s as far as my interest goes.”

“Alright,” I said, raising my hands, “Point taken. Listen, I get that maybe we haven’t gotten along so fantastically, but I really do wish you guys luck with your circumstances, whatever they are. I hope you get what you’ve been looking for.”

“Sure,” Trickster said. He turned to leave, making his way to the doorway that led to the pseudo-apartment they stayed in when they weren’t in their individual headquarters. He beckoned for his teammates to follow, and they did.

Only Genesis lagged behind, her hands on the wheels of her chair. After Trickster had rounded the corner, she said, “He’s tense. Too much comes down to what happens in the next forty-eight hours.”

“Believe me,” I replied, “I get that.”

“Then good luck with your thing,” she said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope I never see you again.”

How the hell am I supposed to take that?

I didn’t respond as she wheeled herself to the corridor.

Okay, I thought, learned what I needed to.

Whatever the terms between Coil and the Travelers were, he hadn’t seen fit to invite them to the meeting place. I’d had to think for some time before making the offer to join us for the meeting. I knew that whatever Coil had planned, inviting the Travelers wouldn’t hurt.

If Coil fully expected to cooperate, to give us the answers we needed and hand Dinah over, then it didn’t matter if the Travelers were there. If he was expecting conflict and he had planned to invite them, then we only gained the benefit of knowing in advance that they’d be there. Finally, if he’d expected trouble but he hadn’t invited them, there was probably a reason, and that reason would be something we could exploit in a pinch.

They hadn’t accepted my invitation anyways, and I hadn’t sensed anything sinister when Trickster had rejected the offer. He’d been too self-centered.

Funny, as I thought on it, how easily he seemed to slip between talking about ‘I’ as in himself to talking about ‘we’, the group. It was as if he assumed everyone in the Travelers was on the same page as him, and my discussions with Sundancer and Ballistic had suggested anything but. Even Cherish’s taunts had pointed to some strife within the ranks.

The second major piece of data that I’d gleaned from my detour was that Dinah wasn’t here. There were a handful of locked doors my bugs hadn’t been able to slip past, but the room Dinah had been in when we’d first visited was empty. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that Dinah wasn’t still in Coil’s underground base, but I had a hard time believing that Coil would leave her there with no armed guards. She was too valuable to risk losing her to one of his enemies or losing his bargaining chip he had in his dealings with me.

We’d agreed that if I could prove myself as a valuable asset, he’d accept my fealty in exchange for Dinah’s freedom. I hadn’t earned him any money, not directly, but that had never really been his goal. He had money, and he could get more by exercising his power in some high-risk, high-reward ventures. I had gathered more followers under my wing than all of the others put together, with the possible exception of Tattletale. I’d put life and limb at risk, partially for his benefit. I’d proved myself as a leader, a soldier and a problem solver. I’d put up with every challenge he’d set in my way: the false death threat he’d put on my head, convincing the mayor, dealing with Dragon and going up against the Nine. Hell, I’d tended to my territory while my dad lay bleeding in the hospital.

I couldn’t say for sure whether Coil would actually follow through with his end of the deal. In his shoes, ignoring what the right thing to do would be, if only because it was pretty fucking obvious he didn’t put much stock in right and wrong, I wasn’t sure I’d give Dinah up. For a guy like Coil, who did things from behind the scenes, playing the long game and orchestrating events to get the best possible results, Dinah’s power was invaluable.

Trickster had used a chess metaphor, back when the thing with the Nine was just beginning. Would I be considered a bishop? Hell, even if I thought of myself as a queen, I wasn’t sure Coil would value having me on his side of the board over having Dinah.

Dinah let him rig the game.

I ventured outside and made my way to the flights of stairs for the building that was still in progress. It had proceeded nicely in recent days, and the outside was partially complete. The sun was setting, and my bugs could see and feel the warm light that streamed in through the openings in the outside, where tarps had come free. The thick dust of concrete and shorn wood layered the area and formed clouds wherever the wind made its way inside.

I’d climbed the stairs to the meeting place only an hour ago, and I’d ventured all the way to the bottom to investigate Coil’s base. That made this my third trip over the twenty flights of stairs, accessing the roof. On my third trip, my aches and pains from being tossed around by Coil’s explosion were most definitely making themselves felt.

In a way, I didn’t mind. I felt restless, and moving made me feel better. Nervous wasn’t the right word. Nervousness implied there was uncertainty, and I was pretty sure this wouldn’t go the way I hoped. Trepidation wasn’t right either. I might have settled on ‘a sense of encroaching doom’ but that felt over the top.

Then again, this was someone’s life on the line. Maybe our lives too. Was it possible to be over the top when the stakes were this high?

The others had arranged themselves around the roof. Bitch was in a half-sitting, half-lying down position, leaning back against Bentley’s side, Bastard sleeping on her lap. Tattletale and Regent were having a discussion at the top of the stairwell, while Grue and Imp were at the edge of the building. Imp sat with her legs dangling off the side of the building, while Grue showed more caution, standing a distance behind her.

“You should be careful,” I spoke up. “If you’re standing too close to the building’s edge, you’re making yourself a prime target for a sniper.”

“You said these suits were bulletproof,” Imp said. I noticed how she didn’t move.

“I said they might be. But judging by the fact that mine let some non-metal shotgun pellets through, I don’t think they’ll stop a bullet. Either way, I’d really rather not start experimenting tonight.”

Imp pulled herself to her feet and retreated from the edge of the building. I could feel Grue’s shoulders drop slightly as he relaxed.

Grue and Tattletale drifted my way, while Regent, Imp and Bitch each sort of moved to the periphery of our huddle. It was Grue who asked, “You think he’s going to take shots at us?”

“I feel exposed,” I said. “If he opens fire on us, are we really in a position to take cover? Or if he bombs out the first floor of the building? Or calls in the teams of heroes he’s in charge of? Could we really get down?”

“I’m not getting that vibe,” Tattletale said.

“But he’s figured out how to trick your power,” I pointed out.

“Any solutions?” Grue asked.

“Yeah. I’ve been working on one, but I’m not sure it’ll work.”

“Share?”

I extended one hand, and a wasp took flight, bearing a trio of spiders. It was forced to turn and fly in circles to slow its forward movement to account for the speed at which the spiders were spooling out thread. The ends of the thread were already wrapped around one of my fingers.

It took a minute before they reached the other formation that was doing the same thing. I began reeling in the thread, until I’d raised a length of cord to the edge of the roof.

Bitch ventured over to see what was going on, and then spun around, “No.”

“My first night out in costume, I got stuck on top of a building. I’m not going to make the same mistake twice. We called Thomas Calvert, he agreed to meet us, but just in case he decides to level the building rather than have a conversation, I want us to have a way down.”

“A way down?” Grue asked.

“I’m pretty sure I got the lengths right. I hope I got the lengths right, because I used up a lot of silk here. Eight cords, we each hold one, or tie one around our waists, and then jump off the side of the building. Swing out over the intersection.”

“Awesome,” Imp said.

“Pretty sure?” Grue asked.

“Pretty sure,” I admitted. “I’ve tried to stagger it, so the silk stretches out over horizontal lines I set out between buildings, so we aren’t just dropping straight down to the street. But it’s elastic, and I can’t account for how much stretch there’ll be in the material. Or how much stretch won’t be there.”

“And if he’s got gunmen, too? We’re left there dangling out over the middle of a street?”

“It’s one option,” I said. “One. We’ll have your darkness so they won’t necessarily have clear shots.”

“And you have your bugs,” Regent said.

“Our opponent here knows exactly what we can do. He’s worked with us and observed us for weeks. Excepting Imp and I, he’s worked with you guys for months. Over a year. So no, he’s not going to do something like underestimate the range of my bugs. He’s going to have snipers that are just beyond my usual range and I won’t be able to fight back.”

“Your relay bugs?” Regent suggested.

“Dying. But yeah, I’ll bring them out. I suppose a night like tonight warrants using up the last of their reserves.”

“And you can fly,” he said, pointing straight up, where Atlas was in the skyline, circling around a stationary Shatterbird.

“I can, but I’d almost rather use the cords and swing down to the street level. If I’m flying and they get a lucky shot off, I’m pretty fucking screwed. They hit me, Atlas won’t ease me to the ground. They hit Atlas, nothing I can do to stop falling. Besides, being on the ground means I have the utility Atlas brings to the table. Being mounted on him means he and I are essentially one unit.”

“I think you’re overthinking this, dork,” Regent said.

“No,” Grue and I said together. Grue didn’t say anything more, but I added, “We plan for every possibility and we’re wrong? We don’t lose anything. If we plan for a situation that does come up? We’ll be glad we did it.”

“If she hasn’t already, I don’t think she will in the next ten minutes,” Tattletale said. “You sense them on the ground, Skitter?”

I shook my head. “My power’s radius is like a bubble, and the bottom end isn’t covering that much ground. I should have been waiting at a spot lower in the building.”

“They’re on their way up.”

I could sense them as they reached the base of the building. Thomas Calvert would be the man who led the way, and the men who followed him were outfitted in PRT gear.

It took time for them to ascend. The building was only partially complete, with floors, some walls and the steel skeleton of beams with tarps stretching between them for the remainder, but no elevators.

Without discussing it, we arranged ourselves on the rooftop, preparing to meet them. I was a little surprised that Grue and Tattletale positioned themselves so they were each just a little behind me, with Imp, Bitch and Regent behind them. Bentley prowled at the perimeter of our group, three-quarters of the way to his typical ‘monstrous’ size and slowly growing.

Thomas Calvert was the first to cross the threshold. Annoying that the first time I would ‘see’ Coil unmasked, I would be blind. He waved one hand to brush away my bugs as they passed over him, but I managed to pick up the essential details. Close cropped, coarse hair, trimmed eyebrows, thin lips and a cleft chin. He wore the body portion of a PRT uniform with an insignia stitched onto his sleeve that I couldn’t make out with my swarmsense.

Most of the squads remained below, but he was joined by a handful of soldiers and three young men in plainclothes, one of whom looked like a bodybuilder.

“Yo, Frenchy,” Tattletale said. “Sup?”

One of the uniforms nodded a slight response. Was he backed up by a ‘PRT’ squad or two consisting of his hired mercenaries?

“Undersiders. After your last interaction with Director Piggot, I assumed you would want to speak to me and try establishing ground rules?”

“We know it’s you, boss,” Regent said.

My bugs caught the slightest exhalation from Director Calvert’s nostrils, a minor expression of annoyance. “The Travelers were a little more circumspect.”

“Circum-what?” Imp asked. I couldn’t tell if she was genuinely wondering or if she was being intentionally obtuse.

“Tone it down, guys,” I said. They’re the types to go after any weakness in authority figures. They’ll nettle him until someone gets in trouble. “Director Calvert. Would it be too much to ask for you to ask your squad to wait downstairs?”

There was an extended pause before he offered a slight nod to one side. His squad turned to return downstairs, and I followed them as they took position by the base of the stairwell.

“I asked you to stay out of costume until further notice,” he spoke.

“With all due respect, Director,” I said. Tattletale had coached me; I would stroke his ego by reinforcing his new position. “I was injured as a bystander in Coil’s attack. I wouldn’t have been hurt if I’d been costumed. Until everything cools down, I think my team and I will play it safe.”

“I see. I can respect that. Nothing serious?”

“Serious? Yes. But it’s nothing life threatening and nothing that can’t be fixed.”

Thomas Calvert reached beneath the armored panel of his vest and withdrew a small remote. He stared at it for several long seconds before putting it away. That done, he clasped his hands behind his back. It was a position that was very ‘Coil’. It was obvious and direct enough that I suspected he was dropping his Director persona and admitting his true nature. “My apologies. I am not infallible.”

You let a dozen or more people die and left twice that many people injured in some way. No, you’re not infallible.

I kept my mouth shut.

“I just checked for listening devices. You aren’t recording this, which means I can answer any questions you have.”

“How much of that was planned?” I asked.

“More than you might suspect. Every person in that room who was not in the audience was accounted for. Mr. Grove and Mrs. Padillo were selected and recruited well in advance. Circus and Chariot were hired nearly a year and a half ago, their actions and development in the public eye carefully orchestrated. Über and Leet were recent acquisitions. I needed a heavy metal suit that could carry a package, and Trainwreck died at an inconvenient time. Most reporters were selected and stationed well in advance, claiming the rear of the room where they would bear the brunt of the attack, so to speak.”

“They didn’t die?” I asked.

“As with Circus, Über and Leet,” Director Calvert nodded in the direction of the three individuals in civilian clothes.

“Wait, Circus is a guy?” Regent asked.

“Depends on your definition of guy,” Tattletale said. “If you’re talking biological or what Circus identifies as. Not that I have it pinned down; I can’t tell if you’re a guy posing as a girl when in costume or a girl who poses as a guy when in plainclothes.”

Circus spat, directing a loogie to shoot a horsefly out of the air. “I’ll take that as a compliment, I guess.”

“The three of them and most of the reporters were removed from the premises in time,” Coil said. “The reporters, as I said, were plants. I needed news reporters in place who would be sure to catch the details I wanted them to catch. Some editing of the footage just prior to it being sent to the news stations served to smooth rough edges and highlight key points.”

“Making Piggot look worse, for example,” Tattletale said.

“Among other things. Appearances are one of the most important things, here. With Chariot’s help, we created a rough emulation of Trickster’s power. The reporters were swapped out, a sufficient amount of raw biological matter was swapped in.”

“Human matter?” I asked.

“That is what the paperwork will say, which is the most important aspect,” Director Calvert answered me. “Rest assured, no serious harm was done. Circus’ abilities allowed us to place the knives in nonlethal areas. Better that Director Piggot looks as ineffectual as possible than simply perish. The same applies to the mayor. Thomas Grove and Mrs. Padillo will recover, but Thomas Grove will concede the election, supporting Mrs. Padillo, despite his strong showing. It will help shake the notion that things were staged.”

“But they were. Every part of it,” Tattletale said.

“Every part of it.”

“The bomb?” I asked.

“The sabotaged power supply was real, but Über’s metal suit housed a teleportation apparatus to detect when it was removed from the premises, so a replica could be brought into the lobby. The initial detonation was little more than light and a shockwave primed to make the most of the Manton effect, leaving my agents with little more than bruises and scratches. They were teleported out, as I already said, just before the final, true detonation. We estimated how fast the evacuation would proceed and calculated a blast radius that would leave the building standing and the crowd largely untouched.”

I could remember Tattletale mentioning how there were less killed or injured than I might have thought. Had she guessed this much?

“Every action I’ve carried out has been carefully weighed, with attention given to the aftermath. Circus, Über and Leet will be leaving Brockton Bay with a sizable reward for their efforts. I don’t expect they will need to return to a life of crime, but I believe they will use a different identity and modus operandi if they do?”

He’d made it a question, and Über answered, “Yes, sir.” I could feel Leet and Circus nodding.

“Good,” Director Calvert spoke. To us, he said, “It just isn’t worth killing good help. Should my ultimate plans here fall through, it’s better to have individuals like them on reserve.”

“And us?” Grue asked.

“Your part in Brockton Bay isn’t entirely over, yet. I established you here for a reason. As Director, I will lead a slow but successful campaign against Brockton Bay’s villains. The Travelers will be the first. I expect a strike squad of my PRT agents will catch them off guard, but they will ultimately escape capture.”

“How unfortunate,” Tattletale said.

“Indeed,” Director Calvert replied. “Doubly unfortunate if other villains should establish a presence in Brockton Bay’s south end, forming a loose alliance with the Undersiders, who maintain a firm hold on the flourishing North end. Oh, rest assured, you Undersiders will lose your hold on this city over the course of months, but it won’t be quite as bad as it sounds.”

“We’ll avoid being captured, probably,” Tattletale said, “Or we’ll get captured and break out before there’s an issue. And then we don’t come back to Brockton Bay. We wind up establishing presences in nearby cities. One or two Undersiders with a firm grip on a given city with other villains under us, establishing a new kind of villainy, and you, Director, as the valiant hero on the opposing side. Your power grows in a way the public is very much aware of, and, well, we’re not losing quite so much as it seems, so your power grows in other ways too.”

Thomas Calvert spread his hands, “It seems you have a firm grasp on what’s going on. I won’t waste our time reiterating. Any questions?”

“Why become PRT director?” Grue asked. “Why not mayor?”

“All eyes will be on the mayor after the recent fiasco. Mr. Grove will serve as a red herring, drawing all suspicious eyes to him before he defers the election to Mrs. Padillo. Besides, who would you rather rule? A dozen capes or fifty thousand unpowered civilians?”

“I see,” Grue said.

“The fear this event creates among the public will make requisitioning additional capes and resources that much easier. The remnants of Coil’s personal army will remain in the city, a sub-gang of highly trained individuals who will serve as an excuse for why the forces of the Undersiders do not grow beyond a certain point.”

“You said the Travelers will be the first to be ousted,” I said. “Does that mean you’ve found a solution to their problem?”

“No. But we have several last resort answers, and those will be exhausted soon.”

With my bugs, I noted Tattletale making a hand gesture. Left index finger and middle finger pressed together, she tapped her thumb against the tips of the other two fingers.

“Any other questions?” he asked.

“Dinah,” I said.

“Mr. Grove’s concession to Mrs. Padillo will involve an offer. He will push for his constituents to support Mrs. Padillo if she accepts his terms. Among these will be a restoration project for the North end, employment stimulation for the laborers and a restoration of the ferry service. In exchange for your continued cooperation, I can give you executive powers in naming the measures you’d like to see pass. I am well aware of what I agreed to, but I would offer this as a compromise in exchange for a one year delay on that term of our contract.”

“No,” I told him. “I’m sorry, but you’ve got to let her go.”

“Then I will. I’m disappointed, but I won’t have it said that I’m not a man of my word.”

My heart was pounding. Just like that?

Director Calvert clasped his hands in front of him, “How would you have us resolve this? I can return her to her family, or pass her on to your custody.”

I didn’t think this far ahead. “Her family, then.”

“Very well. With your permission, we’ll release her to her parents, with some covert surveillance to ensure she does not reveal any details of my greater mission.”

“I have a healthy respect for paranoia, Skitter. Go. Tattletale, could I borrow a few minutes of your time? The Travelers grow anxious, and you can offer some more answers about Noelle’s situation.”

Tattletale turned our way, “Your call, guys.”

“Take Regent and Shatterbird with you,” Grue said.

“You sure?”

“If he respects paranoia, he’ll respect the fact that I’m as worried for your well-being as I am for Skitter’s.”

“Aw,” Tattletale gave Grue a pat on the cheek, “You’re not a very good liar. I appreciate the sentiment, though.”

I felt entirely out of my element. For weeks, months, I’d been bracing myself to hear Coil say no. To hear him say ‘I promised I’d consider it’ or ‘I promised to release her when my plan reached its conclusion, and that won’t happen for another year.’ I didn’t know what to do with my hands. If I’d had pockets, I’d have jammed them in there, but I didn’t. My belt didn’t really suit itself for me hooking my thumbs in there. I didn’t even trust myself to speak, with the possibility that I could say something to ruin this.

No, it was better to be on my guard. I swept the area for threats, with bugs on every set of gloved hands and every weapon.

But the PRT uniforms climbed into their vans and the doors slammed shut.

Director Calvert stayed at the gates that marked the construction site from the roads beyond, Tattletale and Regent beside him.

“In the truck,” the remaining PRT officer told us.

“If it’s alright,” I said, “We’ll ride.”

He looked to Coil, who nodded.

I climbed onto Atlas, and Grue settled behind Bitch on Bentley.

It was a fifteen minute flight, following the truck, and I was on edge for every second.

We stopped outside of a brick building, and the driver of the truck stepped out. I swept the area with my bugs, then swept it again. The interior featured modest living accommodations, a squad of armed soldiers, a man who wasn’t armed and a little girl.

I set Atlas down and waited outside, bugs poised to attack. The door opened, and the soldiers stepped out, parting to let Dinah go free.

The little girl stepped out, hesitant, then stopped. Nothing gave me any indication that she was unhealthy or hurt, but she wasn’t lively either. She was dressed in a skirt, sweater and uggs, her hair thick with chemical smells that told me it had been recently washed.

“Want to go home?” I asked. I reached out.

Her hand found mine, and I clutched it tight.

Couldn’t leave on Atlas. I turned, and she stepped to follow.

Through my bugs, I could feel the thrum of the truck as it started up, I could feel the mild heat and see the flare of light as the highbeams shifted on. If I could see, they would have been blinding.

I tried to squeeze Dinah’s hand, to reassure her, and found myself clenching an empty fist.

My bugs weren’t where they were supposed to be. I was momentarily disoriented as I tried to map my surroundings. When I felt hardwood beneath my feet, I scattered the bugs from beneath my costume. Containment foam, all around me. I’d been teleported.

And Calvert. Calvert and a squad of his people.

“You bastard,” I said.

There was no response. I could feel how his arm was outstretched, sense the general shape of the weapon in his hand. The others had weapons too. I could attack, but it would only make them open fire.

“No monologue?” I asked, “You’re not going to explain how you did it? How you’re going to deal with my teammates or explain what happened to me?”

There was a tap on the microphone. “If we could have silence from the audience, please?”

The low murmur of conversation throughout the auditorium gradually died down. The place wasn’t full, but four out of every five seats were filled, and there were more people at the back, primarily reporters, many from out of town.

My eye darted across the room, trying to assess the situation. The heavy woman in the front row, was that Piggot? It made sense that every person worth talking about would be present. The disasters and Tattletale’s attack on the cell towers meant that there wasn’t TV, there weren’t phones, and the only way for interested parties to find out what the candidates had to say was actually attending.

Outside of the auditorium, Coil’s men gathering in the lobby and at the sides of the building. Some were taking point on the roof, gathering in pairs, working together to assemble sniper rifles. Preparing for a fight. For a war.

Coil was in the lobby, now, and he was joined by others. I could recognize Circus by the sledgehammer she was carrying, the metal head dragging on the floor. Coil said something and she lifted it up. Was he talking about the noise? It shouldn’t matter. He was accompanied by two others I didn’t recognize. A teenage guy and a larger, more athletic man in a heavy metal frame.

“Thank you to everyone for coming. Tonight is a three-way debate. Let me introduce your candidates, starting with Mr. Roy Christner, our mayor incumbent. We also have Mrs. Carlene Padillo, city councilor of communications; and Mr. Keith Grove, C.E.O. of Eaststar Financial. Tonight’s subjects are crime, public safety and the state of the city. Would you start us off, Mayor Christner? What sets you apart from the other candidates in your views?”

I glanced over my shoulder to verify what I was seeing with my bugs. A young man was making his way up the aisle with a toddler, straight for Coil.

“I won’t lie,” Christner said. I glanced his way, saw how haggard he looked. In a way it worked for him, made him look determined. “Things are bad. The situation’s improved from where it was weeks ago, but we’re still in an ugly situation. No less than forty percent of the city has evacuated, hospitals are overflowing, and villains claim to own the streets…”

I looked back to the dad and his kid. They opened the door, stepping through, and two of Coil’s soldiers were on them before they could open their mouths and shout a warning. Putting hands over mouths, the soldiers retreated from the door, separating dad from child. Within seconds, both were being gagged and restrained.

The door closed on its own, leaving nobody any wiser to what was going on.

“…involved with the defense every step along the way. I’ve discussed the subject with Legend, with Dragon and with Chief Director Costa-Brown of the PRT. Daily, I’ve been talking with and working with Director Piggot to see what actions need to be taken to see this city restored to what it once was.”

“He wants to restore the city to what it was? I think he’s wanting us to forget that half of our city was a cesspool before the Endbringer came. Many of you in the audience live in the north end. You know how bad it was. Or maybe the Mayor is referring to the city’s heyday, when the docks were bustling with activity and the entire city could hear the ships coming in and out of the ports. If he’s trying to convince you we’ll return to that time, he’s telling you an outright falsehood. The Lord’s Port, known to many as the ship graveyard, would cost the city twenty-three million dollars just to clear away the damaged ships and dispose of them. That’s not getting into the cost of actually refurbishing the area and updating it to modern standards. Or the fact that anyone approaching within a mile and a half of the area is subjected to uncontrollable, suicidal despair. I visited. I know.”

I sent a message to Coil, drawing words with my bugs.

‘I’m here. Stop.’

He broke up the words with a casual wave of his hands, scattering the bugs. Almost dismissive. Of course he wouldn’t stop now. He’d made little secret about how important his plans were to him, and to stop now, at a moment this important?

“The mayor wants to take us back to where we were? That’s not good enough. I’m proposing that we make this an opportunity. The slate, in many ways, has been wiped clean. Let’s start over again. There’s national and international funding that’s been put in place to help recover from Endbringer attacks and events of gross parahuman involvement. My budget, which is detailed in handouts that will be provided in the lobby, details how we’ll use our tax dollars and that recovery funding to rejuvenate the city. The ferry, which has become a local in-joke, will be started up once more. Low-cost, high-yield housing plans for the north end, demolition and reconstruction on a large scale for Downtown and other damaged areas, and marketing to the rest of the United States to promote and sell Brockton Bay as a symbol of perseverance and human spirit, drawing in new residents and tourism.”

“Councillor Padillo,” the moderator spoke. “Any response?”

“Keith Grove is not addressing the question. He paints a pretty picture, but he doesn’t mention the presence of the local supervillains or the pressures they put on us…”

I fidgeted. Could I attack? Should I attack? If I left now, maybe stepped into the side hallway, I could maybe avoid the soldiers, get to a vantage point where I could mount a counterattack against Coil.

Except I didn’t know what he was planning, and my dad was here. I could take my dad, but then I risked having to explain what was happening, and it would mean leaving Kurt, Alexander and Lacey behind. It meant leaving all these other civilians behind.

It wasn’t practical to bring anyone else along, but I couldn’t bring myself to run from my dad, here. I couldn’t say why, how or any of that, but I felt as though leaving my dad behind here would mean I could never come back. That it would break our relationship, whether it was me getting outed as a supervillain, a break in whatever tenuous bond of trust we had or because one of us would die.

I tended to be more rational than emotional. If I was being totally honest with myself, though, my rationalizations were pretty heavily influenced by my feelings. I could come up with a rational justification for pretty much any course of action. It had led me this far. Which wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

Councilor Padillo was still talking, even as my mind raced. “…Points to a mismanagement of resources. The Mayor would like us to believe that he was involved in genuine efforts to save this city. I can’t believe he would want to be associated with the PRT’s operations as of late. Loss after loss on the part of our heroes. The losses aren’t the fault of the heroes, it’s even understandable, given the sheer power wielded by the likes of the Endbringer, of the Slaughterhouse Nine and the various other threats within the city…”

Coil was moving, now, his people getting in rank and file around him, his pet parahumans standing by.

I had to make my call. Stand up to him and jeopardize everything I’d been working towards? Here, now, with Coil drawing on his power, with three parahumans and no less than twenty elite soldiers who I knew were entirely capable of hitting what they were aiming at, backing him up? Even if I stayed hidden in the crowd, I couldn’t say for sure that he wouldn’t spot me or my dad and order one of his people to move.

The alternative was that I could do as I’d been ordered, avoiding any costumed activity; trust Coil and his power to handle the situation. I hated him, on a level, but I knew he was smart. And I knew he knew I was here; I’d asked Lisa and she’d asked him if it was okay. He had to have a plan for dealing with me if I took any action.

“…Open fighting in the streets. No, the blame lies with the PRT and the mayor’s administration, which he admits was heavily involved in the decisions made. Highly questionable decisions: Holding back when they could have intervened. Forcing confrontations when our heroes were gravely outmatched.”

I saw Piggot shifting uncomfortably in her seat at that. Had this been arranged? A staged scene?

Coil started striding for the closed double doors that led to the back of the auditorium, flanked by Circus and the other parahuman, rank after rank of his soldiers following.

I gripped my dad’s hand, held it tight, and stayed where I was.

The doors banged open. Coil, Circus and… Über was with him, in a heavy metal suit, Leet stood off to one side, holding what looked like a ray gun. People screamed, and it set off a chain reaction of responses throughout the auditorium. People started running for the other exits, only to have their paths barred as more soldiers emerged.

My dad and I stayed in our seats, and I crouched low in front of my seat, pulling my dad down so he would be under cover.

“What the hell?” the Mayor growled into his microphone. “Coil?”

“Mister Mayor,” Coil spoke.

“This is insanity,” Grove spoke.

“Genius sometimes looks that way to those who don’t see the whole picture.” Coil had advanced far enough down the aisle that I could see him clearly. He turned to take in the crowd, and for one heart-stopping moment I thought he’d stop when his eyes fell on me. His head kept moving, and he walked further down the aisle, closer to the stage.

Grove said, “The local heroes-”

“Are occupied. Fires started at select locations, areas where the damage won’t be immediate, but where they cannot be allowed to spread. One such fire is at your headquarters. My apologies. I wanted to target high-priority areas. The other fires will occupy the members of the Undersiders and Travelers and slow them down as they recover from the loss of their individual headquarters.”

I tensed at that. How much of it was a bluff?

“You bastard,” the Mayor growled. “First my niece, now this?”

Niece?

Of course. I’d heard Dinah was niece to one of the mayoral candidates. I hadn’t realized she was the niece to the mayor.

“She’s safe and sound,” Coil said. “As are any people here without a title. If you’re the mayor, or a candidate for mayor, if you call yourself chief of police, lieutenant, director or major, I’m afraid I can’t promise your safety.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Let me demonstrate. Circus?”

Circus was walking through the assembled crowd as though she were on solid ground, but each footstep was onto the back of one of the auditorium seats. She extended her arms out to either side, fingers splayed, then closed her hands into fists. Knives stuck out from the spaces between each finger.

Mr. Grove and Mrs. Padillo ran first, and Mayor Christner was only steps behind. It didn’t matter. Circus flung her arms forward and each of the eight knives hit the mark.

People stood from their seats and for long moments I couldn’t see what happened on the stage after that. I only felt the bodies hit the floor with the bugs. I didn’t dare move the bugs to try to see exactly where the knives had landed.

Coil’s soldiers were holding the reporters and cameramen at gunpoint. I raised myself up high enough to see him turning around to face the largest group of cameras. “The other villains want to seize the city from below. To start at the streets, out of sight, to remove any who would threaten their rule, and claim the various districts one by one. They ignore the fact that there are others in power who aren’t superhuman. Ordinary mortals with the power to make decisions that affect its citizens.

“I would take the more direct route. Brockton Bay is mine. I will make the decisions, claim and distribute the taxes and decide who sits in seats of power. Anyone who would disagree will face the same fate as the mayor, Mr. Grove and Mrs. Padillo.”

I rose up enough to get a glimpse of the stage. The mayor was lying on his back, chest rising and falling with too much force, as if he was sucking in lungfuls of air and then forcing them out with just as much strength. He had a knife sticking out of the middle of his torso, another in his shoulder, and yet another in his leg. My father pulled me down before I could see the others.

The mayor wasn’t dead, but he looked like the man might be dying. Was I condoning this by staying silent? I’d told myself I would let Coil’s plan play out until he did something unconscionable and this threatened to cross the line. It was only the fact that the mayor was still alive and the fact that I couldn’t think of what I might do to intervene that kept me on the sidelines, hiding from the soldiers and the assault rifles they were wielding.

“You cannot expect this to succeed,” the voice blared over the speakers.

“Director Piggot,” Coil spoke. “I must admire your courage, putting yourself in the line of fire so soon after your last escapade. Kidnapped by the Undersiders, weren’t you?”

Through my bugs, I could sense how Piggot was leaning heavily on a desk just in front of the stage, using the debate moderator’s microphone. “This plan of yours was doomed from the outset. Just for what you’ve done, threatening these people and ordering the execution of those three on the stage, they’ll send the entire Protectorate after you. America will demand it. Or are you so mad you think we’ll let you crown yourself king?”

“Mad? No. A monster? Maybe. Better to say I’m a freak of nature. My power is to control my own destiny, to reshape and cultivate it. What you see here is only the tip of the iceberg.”

“There’s a greater plan, then.”

“Quite. A shame you won’t discover it. Circus?”

Piggot backed away from the table and ducked low. It didn’t help. Circus lobbed a throwing knife into the air, so that it arced. She didn’t have eyes on the director, but the knife nonetheless went high, catching the light as it reached the peak of its flight near the high ceiling of the auditorium. It plunged down to strike its target and screams sounded from the front of the auditorium.

“See it through,” Coil ordered, turning to leave with Über and Leet accompanying him. Circus turned to follow, flicking her wrist hard over her shoulder. Three knives traveled through the air, their paths eerily in sync as they nearly touched the ceiling, converging together as they dropped towards Piggot.

I barely had time to think about it, rising to my feet and calling on my bugs. I knew it was too few, too late, but standing by while someone got murdered? Four or five cockroaches, some houseflies, it wasn’t enough. I’d held the bugs back, keeping them in out of the way areas, and now I didn’t have enough to block the knives or divert them from their path.

There was a flash of light around Piggot, and for just an instant, I thought maybe she had powers. Maybe she’d had a trigger event, or she always had them but kept them in reserve?

But it wasn’t her. Weld caught the knives, letting them sink into his palm, down to the hilts.

It was the Wards. Weld and Vista were at the foot of the room. Vista was raising her hands, folding the walls into barriers to block those of Coil’s soldiers who weren’t holding the reporters hostage. Kid Win was at one corner of the room, firing what looked like concussion blasts into soldier and civilian alike, a gun in each hand, and the hovering turrets at his shoulder adding still more firepower to the fray. He’d taken the fight out of them with the first barrage, and the follow-up fire was apparently to take down the soldiers who managed to climb to their feet or raise a weapon. The concussion-cannons were obvious nonlethal weapons from the casual way he was firing into the massed people, intended to stun and disable rather than harm.

Chariot had a gun that was firing off charges of electricity, similar to the one I’d borrowed from Kid Win, and was flying over the assembled soldiers, unloading shots on them. His costume was different from the last time I’d seen him, with single-wheeled roller blades at his toes and a flight system that didn’t seem to be attached to him. A disc the size of a car tire floated behind his head and shoulders, almost luminescent with energy, and the wings of his flight suit, tipped with jets of gold light, floated out to either side of it.

Clockblocker formed the final part of the strike party. He wasn’t fighting- not directly. He stood by a white cloth that had been frozen in time, covering the soldiers.

They were turning the situation around. The suddenness with which they’d appeared, their positioning, they had planned this, assessing the situation, deciding where they needed to be to make a decisive strike and protect the crowd, and they must have teleported in. I knew they had the technology to teleport objects. I hadn’t guessed they had it for people, too.

“This way!” Weld bellowed. “Evacuate through the area at the back of the stage! Stick to the sides! And I need medical help for the wounded!”

Their group was a little battered, beaten and bruised, and they wore replacement costume parts. Where I could see skin, I noted the welts of bug bites and stings that hadn’t yet faded. Vista had covered hers with makeup, but they were there.

I was frozen by indecision. I felt almost hopeful, strange as that sounded. If the good guys got the upper hand, if they actually beat Coil, then I could rescue Dinah by simply visiting Coil’s base and opening the door to her room. Coil was being ruthless here. At his orders, four people had been wounded to the point that they might die. If I stepped in to help…

No, my help wouldn’t be welcome. It could even be dangerous, a distraction at a crucial time. I would also have to escape. A resounding victory might see them locking down the area to take down witness statements or make sure no soldiers removed their uniform and slipped out with the crowd. Nobody had seen me gathering the bugs in my futile attempt to try to help Piggot. But if they found out Skitter was in the building and won, then it would be a question of narrowing down which teenage girl in the building fit the profile.

And if I tried to help and Coil won, well, my dad and I would be fucked. No sense in putting it politely. He would be in a prime position to not only retaliate, but maybe even retaliate without losing the support of my teammates.

If anything anchored me in place, it was the way one of Dad’s hands clutched my own, the other hand holding my wrist, and the way he seemed to be trying to shield me with his body. His face was taut with fear, his body rigid.

“Wards!” Weld shouted. “All clear!?”

“Clear!” the cry came back three times, from Clockblocker, Kid Win and Chariot. The soldiers had been taken down.

My dad tugged on my hand. Enough people had made their way down the aisles that we had room to maneuver. I followed his lead, letting him pull me towards the aisle.

“Regroup! Optimal range, facing the doors!” Weld ordered. Vista, Clockblocker, Kid Win and Chariot hurried to the center of the room. He stayed where he was, watching as civilians from the crowd tended to the wounded. All but the mayor were apparently alive. The only one I could wonder about was the mayor. He was lying prone, receiving CPR at the hands of two people.

“Now!” Weld shouted.

Clockblocker moved, lunging three feet to his left to tag Chariot. Chariot froze in the air.

I stopped in my tracks, momentarily confused. Had some of the Wards turned traitor? No. Kid Win and Vista seemed to be taking this in stride. Both were working together to bind Chariot.

There were cries of protest from the crowd. “What are you doing?” “He didn’t do anything!”

“He’s a double agent,” Weld spoke, his voice carrying. “Working for Coil. Go. Evacuate, get out of here. We have this in hand.”

He radiated confidence. Damn it, for all the times we’d fought the Wards, for every time I’d cursed the heroes for not doing what I needed them to do, I began to feel hopeful.

My dad and I were making our way down the aisle, past the soldiers that Chariot had laid low. We were at the steps leading up to the stage when the doors slammed open.

Über led the way, followed by Coil, Leet, Circus and a squadron of soldiers. His metal frame took the brunt of the incoming fire, and he used his arms to shield his exposed upper body from the blasts of electricity and the concussion shots from Kid Win’s guns and turrets.

Vista began shrinking the arms, but the progress seemed slower. She had trouble using her power when there was living material in the way, but it was still working.

Being so close to the fighting, to the gunfire and flashes of electricity, people were reacting badly. Screaming, shouting at others to move faster, pushing and shoving. Worst of all, they were making so much noise I couldn’t follow everything that was going on. Coil was saying something, his words carrying to the heroes, but I missed it in the chaos.

I didn’t want to out myself as being present, so I was limited in how many bugs I could deploy. A small handful on Coil served to let me follow his movements. He’d dropped to one knee behind Über, and Leet handed him a small remote control. He wasted no time in pressing the button.

The noise of gunfire changed. My head wasn’t the only one that turned to see what had happened.

Kid Win had stopped shooting, and a shrill whine was filling the air. He turned to Weld, who began tearing at his armor.

Leet stepped out from behind Über and shot Vista. She was thrown down the length of the aisle, slamming against the base of the stage. He took another shot at Clockblocker, who froze himself. Kid Win drew another gun from a side holster and shot Leet.

Weld had finished dismantling Kid Win’s armor, freeing what looked to be a power cell.

I could barely make out the words, but someone in the crowd did. A woman screamed the words, “He said it’s a bomb! Sabotage! Run!”

In that instant, the crowd became a crush of bodies, each trying so hard to get up and through the stairwell that we barely made any progress. Über, Leet, Circus and Coil began running towards the lobby, Über kicking down the door, leaving the heroes to deal with the bomb they were holding, which was squealing at a higher pitch and volume with every passing second. It was glowing, brilliant in its golden radiance.

Kid Win pointed at Chariot. The boy was frozen, still, but the wings and pack on his back were still active, not attached to Chariot’s suit and therefore unaffected by Clockblocker’s power.

Weld caught the setup out of the air, tearing away the outer casing the second it was in his hands. Kid Win changed the wiring. They were shouting something to one another, but I couldn’t make out the words. Weld pointed up.

The bomb or sabotaged power supply disappeared, teleporting away in the same grid of lines that I’d seen Kid Win use to summon his massive cannon. It dawned on me what they’d done. Teleporting the bomb straight up into the sky, where there was nobody and nothing to be affected.

Or that had been their plan. It didn’t work out that way. I saw a flicker of light from the lobby, the glow of the device, and Coil wheeling around to face us, his screaming lost in the midst of the shrill whine and the shouts of the others.

My eye to brain response was too slow to process everything that happened next. I saw it in snapshots: the swelling energy of the sabotaged power supply, Coil’s body coming apart in pieces, the chairs of the auditorium and fragments of floorboards being thrown into the air as the explosion seemed to move in slow motion.

Brian was waiting for me as I passed through the door and into Coil’s underground base. He held a paper out to me.

Sirs and Madams,

The terms of engagement are as follows:
1. Three days to each member of the Slaughterhouse Nine so we can conduct our tests. Tests will be performed one after the other, with eight rounds in total.
2. A successful test or the removal of a candidate who has failed a test will earn the tester bonus time. 3-12 hours for a successful test depending on the number of candidates remaining and 24 hours for an execution.
3. Should a tester suffer a sound defeat at the hands of any individual during their allotted time, they will be penalized one day of allotted time.
4. Each tester operates independently, with no hands-on assistance from other members of the Slaughterhouse Nine. Assistance may be bought, bartered or otherwise rendered in a hands-off manner, possibly including medical assistance, information, provided equipment and suggestions.
5. Candidates may receive assistance, hands-on or otherwise, from Brockton Bay residents only. We are fully aware that Legend and his teammates are in Brockton Bay. Should they interfere with a tester, all candidates will lose the protection of any rules, all terms offered here will cease and the threat implied in point eight will be carried out. This only applies to confrontations with the active tester.
6. The Slaughterhouse Nine will handle the punishment of any members of their own team, in the event of failures, the inability of the tester to perform at least a partial round of testing or killing a candidate without notification.
7. Should the defending parties have two or more candidates remaining when the eighth round of testing concludes, the Slaughterhouse Nine will depart Brockton Bay without incident and refrain from returning for three years at a minimum.
8. If and when the Slaughterhouse Nine do eliminate five of the six candidates, or if any candidates leave the city, the Slaughterhouse Nine are prepared to penalize the city for their failure.

Mannequin is the first to carry out his round of testing. He has two days remaining.

We will be in touch.

“Where is everyone?” I asked, handing the paper back to him.

He pointed down the hall.

“Christ,” Brian said, shaking his head as he walked, rereading the terms. He opened the door for me.

Coil was inside, at the end of a long table. The Undersiders sat at one side of the table, with Circus sitting at the farthest edge, beside Coil. The Travellers, minus Noelle, sat along the other side. I took note of the blond teenager who wasn’t even wearing part of a costume. Oliver. Coil was the opposite, as fully covered as ever. Everyone else was costumed but they had their masks and helmets off.

I got my first good look at Lisa since I’d left her bleeding in Ballistic’s headquarters. The scar ran from the corner of her mouth to the corner of her jaw, and dark stitches ran down the length of it. The slang term for this kind of injury was a Glasgow smile or a Chelsea smile, but the term seemed ill-fitting. Where Lisa often had a grin on her face, the cut pulled the corner of her mouth down into a perpetual lopsided-frown rather than a smile.

Bitch gave me a dark look as I entered, but many of the others were smiling.

“And you kicked Mannequin’s ass,” Trickster said. He leaned back in his chair, balancing on two of the legs, his feet on the table. “You had a busy night.”

“Honestly, I didn’t kick his ass. He got some of my people, he thrashed me, I got a piece of him.”

“No,” Lisa said, her voice quiet. She couldn’t really move one corner of her mouth when talking, so her words came out slightly slurred.

I saw her work her tongue in her mouth and then take a sip of water, wincing. Brian had updated me: the cut had probably damaged one or more of her salivary glands, and she’d have dry mouth until it healed. Maybe forever. The really scary part was that she might have suffered some nerve damage as well. How much of that half-frown was because of the direction of the cut and the way the stitches pulled, and how much was because her nerves were damaged enough that her face was drooping?

She caught me looking and gave me a wink. She took another gulp of water and cleared her throat before speaking again. “They took one day from Mannequin because they thought he lost.”

“It’s not all advantageous,” I said, thinking aloud. “Yes, we’re now in a position where we could win, with some planning or luck, and the plan we were hashing out at our last meeting might be easier, now. But we’re also facing pretty heavy consequences if we fail… heavier consequences. And there’s a lot of places where this could go wrong. We don’t even know who all the candidates are.”

“No. Jack said they picked two heroes. Hookwolf, yes. But their last pick is a hero, not one of Faultline’s,” Lisa said.

“And we can’t say for sure who this person is or what actions they plan to take,” I said. “Too much hinges on everyone else’s willingness to cooperate and play by the rules, and the stuff that happened at the last meeting of the city’s villains makes me skeptical.”

Brian nodded. “It’s important that we find this person, make sure they play along, so we don’t wind up losing before this game of theirs even starts.”

“There’s other problems here,” I said, “We can’t forget what Dinah said about Jack. If he leaves town, it could mean disaster. If we win, we could all lose in the long run, because it’d mean he left town and Dinah’s prophecy would come true. Hell, a lot hinges on whether the Protectorate is on the same page as us. If they arrest him and take him out of town…”

“It could mean the end of the world.”

“Right,” I said.

“Hookwolf has proposed an all-out attack,” Coil spoke for the first time since my arrival. “He wants to gather the more powerful members of his alliance together into an army and attempt to overwhelm the Nine and kill Jack Slash in the chaos.”

“That won’t work.” Brian shook his head. “These guys specialize in dealing with crowds, and they’re experienced when it comes to that sort of thing.”

“Hookwolf believes our local capes are collectively strong enough to do what other groups couldn’t.”

“Maybe they are, but I wouldn’t bet on it. We should be focused on what we can do,” Brian said.

“You guys are better set up for information gathering and escapes,” Trickster said. “We could take them on, depending on who it is and how small the group is, but I don’t know how well we’d do in those circumstances.”

“Crawler couldn’t reach Noelle where we’ve got her stashed,” Trickster said, “I’m not sure what the others could do.”

“What about when Siberian comes after Noelle?” I asked. “Will the same measures stop her?”

“Probably not,” Trickster replied.

“This would be a lot easier if you’d tell us more about her,” I pointed out. “Unless you think she can hold her own against the Nine, we’re going to be helping protect her.”

Trickster frowned. “There’s not much to say. She’s in containment, and if she doesn’t stay where she is, things would get worse, fast.”

“So she’s dangerous, and she’s not entirely in control of her power?”

He tilted his chair forward until it was flat on the ground and set his elbows on the table, hands clasped in front of his mouth. He glanced down the table at his teammates. I wasn’t sure, but I thought maybe he glanced briefly at Coil.

With a resigned tone, he told us, “She’s dangerous enough that if Siberian got to her, I think she’d make it out okay. The rest of us wouldn’t.”

The table was silent for a moment. I could see something in the faces of the Travelers. Pain? It wasn’t physical, so perhaps it was emotional? It could be fear, guilt, regret, or any number of other things.

Trickster’s words reminded me of what Sundancer had said back when she and I had fought Lung. Sundancer had held back in using her power because she was frightened about hurting bystanders or killing the people she attacked. Her power was too hard to use without hurting someone. Ballistic was the same. Was Noelle another case of the same thing? That same too-powerful ability, only on a greater scale?

Brian sighed. “We’ll deal with Noelle’s situation when it comes up. We have three targets they’re going to be coming after, with a fourth if we consider that Mannequin’ll be after Skitter. If we split into two groups, then we can maintain enough offensive power to defend ourselves against the ones like Mannequin, Burnscar, Jack or Shatterbird.”

Sundancer cut in, “Which makes me wonder… Sorry if this is a crummy idea, but what if we waited for Jack’s turn, and then tried to kill him?”

“No guarantees there,” Brian answered her. “I think we’ll have to be proactive in going after him. Maybe we can use Hookwolf’s distraction, maybe he’ll get cocky and make a mistake.”

“Doubt it,” Tattletale said, “He’s lasted years doing what he does.”

I couldn’t help but nod in agreement.

“Besides, he goes last,” Tattletale finished.

“To get back to what you were saying, you were proposing dividing the teams?” Coil spoke.

“Yeah,” Brian said. “Bitch has offensive power of her own. Skitter does too. If there’s no complaints, we could play this largely geographically. Maybe me, Imp, Bitch and Skitter? If you guys can put your differences aside?”

“No problem,” I said.

“Whatever,” Bitch answered, noncommital.

It was only when Brian mentioned Imp that I realized Aisha was present. I’d almost missed her. I wanted to believe that it was because she was sitting at the end of the table and there were four of my teammates between us, but I couldn’t be sure. It would be damn nice if there was some sort of gradual immunity to her power.

Coil spoke before Circus could reply. “No. I pulled her off of a task as a precautionary measure, as I had one aspect of my long-term plans derailed last night with Trainwreck’s demise at the Nine’s hands. I would rather she did not fall to an unfortunate coincidence of the same nature.”

“What happened?” Sundancer asked.

“They’ve eliminated the Merchants,” Coil said.

I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. The Merchants were scum of the worst sort. It wasn’t just that they polluted everything they touched and did some reprehensible things. They reveled in it. They wanted to be the lowest of the low. On the other hand, it was a point for their side. Seven or eight parahumans we no longer had to fight the Nine with.

“Also, I would prefer her involvement in my operation stay under wraps. She can defend Noelle and myself for the time being.”

“Then Trickster? Or Genesis?” Brian asked.

“I would rather stay close to Noelle,” Trickster said. “If Genesis is willing, that would be fine.”

“And that leaves Ballistic, Sundancer, Trickster, Noelle, Regent and Tattletale for the second group. We stay together, we keep an eye on our territories to watch for trouble from Hookwolf’s contingent, and we keep an eye out for opportunity. Tattletale? You’re good watching the downtown areas?”

Lisa nodded.

“And Skitter has the sensory abilities to check areas of the Docks where the Undersiders have territory.”

“I’ll need to visit each area in turn. Unless we have some people to pass on messages, and a means of communication.”

“I arranged a delivery,” Coil said. “You’ll each be provided with a satellite phone before you leave, with mobile phones to use when the towers are in operation again. It won’t be immediate, but I have shipments of new generators, appliances, laptops and other necessities on the way. With the information Hookwolf has provided us about Shatterbird’s power, I think we could shield the most necessary pieces of equipment with soundproofing in case of a repeat incident.”

“My bugs did hear something just before the blast hit,” I said. “Is her power ultrasonic?”

“Something like that. Tattletale believes that Shatterbird’s power causes glass to resonate at a very particular frequency, where it generates that same resonation in other pieces of glass with the aid of her power, perpetuating the effect until it runs out of large pieces of glass to affect.”

“And,” Lisa said, “She probably has a reason for hitting the entire city like she does.” She took another drink of water. “Big pieces of glass help transmit the signal, maybe smaller shards help her in another way. Probably helps or allows more delicate movements.”

“I’m not saying I’m not happy to be getting more concrete information on how they operate. I just wish it was against the ones we don’t have any idea how to stop. Like Crawler and Siberian,” I said.

“We use the same strategy we used to fight Aegis,” Brian said. “When fighting an opponent who won’t go down, you run, you distract, you occupy them with other things, and you contain them to buy yourself time to do what you have to do.”

He was right. It just wasn’t ideal. Avoiding or containing them was easier said than done, for one thing, and it was less an answer than a stopgap measure.

“The biggest threat from these guys is that they could strike at any time, from any direction. So why don’t we spy on them? We find out where they are, and then we keep tabs on their movements. I can handle one shift, Genesis does the next. They won’t notice me, and Genesis can stay concealed.”

“It’s far too risky,” Brian said. “You joined this team so I could stop you from getting yourself killed.”

“It would be nice to know what they’re up to,” Trickster cut in.

“They won’t even know I’m there.”

“You think they won’t know you’re there,” Brian said. “There’s a distinction there. It’s important, and it could either lead to a minor advantage-”

“A huge advantage,” Aisha said.

“-Or it could lead to you being turned into a human test subject for whatever fucked up idea Bonesaw had recently,” Brian finished, ignoring her.

“No! I got a power, and it’s a useful power. Except you don’t want me to use it, because you think it’s going to stop working all of a sudden, or someone is going to see me-”

Looking at Brian and Aisha, I knew this discussion would get worse before it got better. I cut in before either of them said something regrettable. “Imp. It’s a good idea, but they do have a way of sensing you. Cherish can sense emotions, and if Dragon is any indication, your power primarily works through sight, hearing and touch. Like Grue’s. She can probably find you and track you down.”

“We don’t know that,” Aisha said.

“It’s a pretty good educated guess, I think. I know you want to be useful, but we can make more use of you if you’re with us, going up against someone like Mannequin or Shatterbird, who are far less likely to be able to see you. Help us defend ourselves.”

“This sucks!”

“Imp,” Grue said, as he glanced at the others at the table and frowned, “We’re in the company of our employers and our peers. Let’s stay professional and discuss this after.”

“Professional? You asshole, you’re the one who’s refusing to use my talents because I’m your sister. I’ve been on the team longer than Skitter was when you guys were robbing a bank and fighting the ABB.”

“You’re younger, and she’s more level-headed-”

“Enough,” Coil said. It served to shut them both up.

For a few seconds, anyways. Aisha scowled. “Enough is right. I’ll see you guys later.”

“Hey!” Brian stood from his seat.

I think I wasn’t the only one to look up at him and wonder why. He looked at us, similarly confused, and then sat down just as quickly as he’d stood.

Lisa looked pensive. I nudged her and asked, “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she replied. Then she looked at Coil, “Hey, while you’re asking for suggestions, I have an idea?”

“Anything helps.”

“You think you could get your hands on some surveillance hardware? Skitter’s working on some new costumes, and I was thinking we could have something like small cameras mounted on our masks or helmets.”

“I can inquire with my usual suppliers. Why?”

“Well, we’ve got one teammate that’s sort of hard for the rest of you to keep track of, and I think it might help. And if nobody objects, I’m kind of wanting to take a less hands-on approach from here on out. I’ve batted a pretty low percentage as far as injuries over the last few months of action… Glory Girl, Bakuda, Leviathan, now this incident with Jack. If I had a means of communication and the gear to give me some eyes on the scene, I think I could be more useful.”

Coil looked at Brian.

“I gave you a hard time about your having to take the same risks as the rest of us, back when you first joined, but I think you’ve done your share. So long as you’re contributing,” Brian said.

Coil nodded. “I’ll see what we can prepare.”

Lisa smiled a little, using only the one side of her mouth.

■

Our canine mounts raced through the streets with impunity. The glass that covered the roads, the lack of windows, windshields or working dashboards in the few cars that still ran all contributed to the glacial pace of traffic. There was little for the dogs to watch out for, no moving vehicles and few bystanders. Every stride the dog took made the bag I was carrying bang against my hip and made every injury I had explode with pain. I clenched my teeth and endured it. There weren’t many other options. I could hardly complain to Bitch.

Bitch was well in the lead, and there was a kind of aggression to how she rode. She pulled ahead, evading cars by only a couple of inches, forcing them to swerve, and she goaded Bentley faster with kicks and shouts.

We hadn’t raised the topic of Bitch and her nomination for the Nine. I think the others hadn’t wanted to add tension and the possibility of argument or violence to the already complicated situation. I know I hadn’t. My last real interaction with Bitch was when we’d parted ways after the fight with Dragon. I’d told her we were even, but there had been some anger and hurt feelings on both sides. I was the last person she wanted to have grilling her.

Bitch made Bentley slow to a walk as she reached my territory. It still took us a good thirty seconds to catch up.

Using my power, I signalled Sierra and Charlotte. Grue, Bitch and I climbed down from our dogs and then led them forward.

“Mannequin slipped by you once,” Grue said. “You going to be able to keep an eye out?”

“I had some ideas, but I’m running low on resources,” I said. “Let me see what I can do.”

Genesis began to appear a short distance away, near Bitch. A blurry, beige and yellow, vaguely human-shaped figure coalesced into being. The shape then sharpened into features and alter in hue until there was the figure of a teenage girl, vaguely cartoonish. By the time we reached her, she looked indistinguishable from a regular girl. She had auburn hair, freckles, and thick glasses. A small smile touched her face as she stretched her arms and legs.

“Everything good?” Grue asked her.

“Good enough. I’m going to keep this shape until Coil’s people can deliver my real body. Then I’ll need to recuperate some.”

“Sure.”

Bitch scowled at me. Bastard, her puppy, stood beside her. He had received the brunt of her power, and looked roughly as large as an adult great dane. The features were different from her usual dogs. The spikes had more symmetry to their arrangement, and the muscles looked less like tangles. It tugged briefly on the chain that led from her hand to its collar, and she pulled back sharply. It didn’t pull again, though it was easily powerful enough to knock her over.

My people met us as we entered the neighborhoods where my lair and the barracks we’d set up were. Sierra and Charlotte were in the lead, the three ex-ABB members behind them. The O’Daly clan stood at more of a distance, all either members of the family, friends or romantic partners. Other, smaller families filled in the gaps. My ‘gang’ numbered nearly fifty people in total.

“Holy crap,” Genesis said.

“It’s why we wanted to set up base here,” Grue said. “Skitter’s the most established of us.”

“I’ve been focusing on structural repairs and building when I’m not helping my teammates,” Genesis said. “I don’t have many threats to get rid of, and it was the best way for me to be productive. And meanwhile you’re further than I expected to get in half a year.”

I couldn’t bring myself to feel proud. “I guess I’m motivated.”

Genesis whistled, looking around. There were some looks of confusion as she strode forward into the crowd. I suppose it was unusual for a teenage girl to be in the company of three known supervillains and a mass of monstrous dogs.

“Sierra,” I said. “Status?”

“We’re nearly done with the second building. There isn’t a lot of elbow room, so we’ve been cleaning up the road.”

“Good. No trouble?”

“Not that I know of.”

I pulled the bag from over my shoulder and handed it to her. “Distribute these to the people in charge of the various groups. Work it out so you can pass on messages quickly, and get any necessary information to me asap.”

“Okay.” She grunted as she took the bag.

“Genesis,” I spoke. “You said you were doing some rebuilding?”

She slapped her stomach, “Made some mortar, just a matter of sticking stuff back where it’s supposed to be, if it’s obvious enough.”

“Want to see what you can do, before your body gets here?”

She nodded and headed off. My minions rapidly backed away from her as she began dissolving.

“Charlotte?”

“Yes?”

“How set up is the building you guys were working on?”

“Mess is cleaned out, but we haven’t moved much in.”

“That should be fine.”

“We ready?” Grue asked.

I turned to face him and Bitch. “Just about. Bitch, there’s a space set aside that we can use for your dogs. We’ll patrol through the various territories in an hour or so, stop by your territory and pick up some supplies for them, and you can bring your dogs here.” I had to resist adding an ‘if that’s okay’. Firmness would work best with her, even if it did carry the risk of provoking her.

“Fine.”

“Good,” Grue said. “Let’s go rest and eat. We can wait for Genesis and the other gear Coil’s dropping off.”

I had enough bugs nearby to start setting up my early warning system. With the assistance of a horde of flying insects, I began guiding spiders through various points of my territory. They drew out lines of silk across alleyways and doors, windows and rooftops. I couldn’t spare the spiders, so I placed ants on each line. They would feel it if there was a vibration, not as well as the spiders, but well enough.

Ten thousand tripwires for Mannequin to navigate past.

My expectation was for the lines to maybe give me an early warning of Mannequin’s approach, sometime in the coming hours, maybe in the dead of night.

I didn’t expect to find him in the span of a minute. A figure on a nearby rooftop was striding through the webs and avoiding the bugs.

I stopped. “Mannequin.”

Everyone else froze. Even the dogs seemed to mime their master’s stillness.

But he was already leaving, moving with surprising swiftness as he pushed through another few lines of webbing at the edge of the roof furthest from us. A second later he was on the ground, moving through an alleyway.

“We could go after him,” Grue asked.

“We couldn’t catch him, I don’t think,” I said, “And he may be trying to bait us into a trap. Or maybe he wants to loop around while we give chase and kill my people. Shit, I didn’t think he’d come so quickly.”

“We weren’t exactly inconspicuous.”

I frowned.

Mannequin was on guard for a trap, enough that he’d probably noticed the tripwire and decided to retreat. Mannequin and I had an estimation of one another, now. Neither of us wanted a direct confrontation. Both of us would be wary of traps or trickery. He was a tinker, he would have prepared something to ward against the tactic I had employed last time. Topping it off, amassing people to please Coil had the unfortunate side effect of making me more vulnerable to Mannequin’s attacks. He could hurt me without even getting close to me, the second I let my guard down and gave him an avenue for attack.

The only ambiguous advantage we had over him was that he was working with a time limit. He needed to test Bitch and get revenge on me, in addition to dealing with all of the other candidates, and he had less than forty-eight hours to do it.

I wasn’t so sure that was a good thing. It was beginning to dawn on me what we were in for. Forty eight hours of being on the edge of our seats, unable to sleep deeply, constantly watching for attack from Mannequin or from Hookwolf’s contingent.

When we were done, we faced seventy-two hours of the same thing. We’d be that much more tired, that much more likely to make a mistake. Then we’d have to do it again. And again, and again. Eight rounds in total. From my altercation with Mannequin, I knew we wouldn’t make it through even the first few encounters without some loss, some injury or casualty. By the time the eighth round of testing rolled around, what kind of condition would we be in? What condition would my territory be in?

I’d initially seen Tattletale’s deal with Jack as a good thing, a miniscule chance at success, with some drawbacks and negative points.

The more I dwelled on it, the more daunting it seemed.

“You okay?” Grue asked me.

“A little spooked,” I admitted.

He set a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll make it.”

Speaking from the perspective of someone who had gone toe to toe with these guys, I wasn’t so convinced.

The skeleton of a building loomed over us. Girders and beams joined together in what would become one of Brockton Bay’s high rises, twenty stories tall. At the base of it was a sea of crushed stone, with innumerable bulldozers, piledrivers, loaders, mixers and graders standing still and dark. The only light came from the buildings and streetlights on the surrounding streets.

Tattletale put key to lock and let us through the fence that surrounded the site. She held the gate open as Grue, Regent, Bitch and I filed through, followed by Judas and Brutus. The two dogs were nearly normal in size, nothing that would raise alarm if someone saw us at a distance. When we were through, Tattletale shut the gate and reached through the gap to put the lock back in place and click it shut.

Gravel crushed underfoot as we made our way to the unfinished high rise. Tattletale pointed to a hatch, surrounded by a rim of concrete. The hatch itself had a yellow warning sign reading ‘Drainage’, sporting images beneath of a man wearing a hazmat suit and a man wearing a gas mask. She fiddled with the keyring to get the right key, undid the lock and raised the hatch. Stairs led down into a darkness that looked and smelled very much like a storm drain.

As we descended, the smell got stronger. We passed through a door with metal bars, and then traveled down a long hallway. The room at the end of the hall was small, with one other door and a small surveillance camera in one corner. The door we faced had no handle, forcing us to wait. It took about twenty seconds before someone opened the door for us. One of Coil’s men.

The interior of the sub-basement had none of the smell of the previous chambers, and consisted of two tiers with walls of poured concrete. The upper level we stood on was an arrangement of metal walkways that extended around the room’s perimeter. Crates and boxes filled the level below, and I could see fifteen or so of Coil’s people down there, sitting on crates or leaning against them, talking among themselves.

Each soldier was outfitted in a matching uniform: shades of gray and some black, hard vests with raised collars to protect their necks. Only a few wore their balaclavas, and I could see a variety of nationalities in a group that was mostly men. All of the soldiers had assault rifles somewhere nearby, slung over shoulders with straps and leaning against walls or crates. Polished steel attachments on the underside of each gun’s barrel contrasted with the dark gunmetal tone of the rest of the equipment.

The man who had opened the door for us inclined his head in the direction we were to go. We traversed the metal walkway, and passed more of Coil’s soldiers. I saw one squad of six below us was gearing up, pulling on masks and checking their guns. Five seconds later, we passed Circus on the walkway, in a costume and makeup of red and gold. Oblivious to us or our passing, she was leaning against a wall by a stack of cardboard boxes, standing intimately close to a young soldier with close-cropped red hair and an ugly scar running down one side of his neck.

We found Coil at the end of the walkway, talking to four people who most definitely weren’t soldiers. Each wore a suit, and none seemed the type to carry a gun. There was a heavyset woman, a man who must’ve been fifty or sixty, a man who stood no more than four feet tall and a blonde woman who barely looked out of high school.

“Cranston, can you have it for tomorrow?”

“Yes, sir,” the blonde woman replied.

“Good. Pearse, the soldiers?”

“Squads Fish, Nora and Young are suited up and ready for your okay,” the short man spoke.

“And the replacement recruits?”

Pearse handed Coil a set of folders, “I’ve put post-its on the most promising. We need two to make up for one soldier that was recently injured, and one that decided to skip town.”

Coil tucked the folders under one arm, “Good. Duchene, I’ll talk to you later tonight about our preparations. The rest of you, I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

The suits marched off, with all but the fat lady passing us to go the way we’d come, along the metal walkway. The woman headed down the stairs to the lower area with all the soldiers, and a group of people that weren’t in uniform flocked to her. People with clipboards and crowbars. The construction crew?

“Undersiders,” Coil spoke, “You’ve recuperated this past week?”

“More or less,” Grue replied. He had his arms folded.

“Excellent. And what do you think?” He gestured to the underground complex around us with a sweep of his arm.

“It’s impressive,” Grue spoke.

“Once things are set up, some of this will be a base of operations for the Travelers, the rest of this space serving as a place my men can meet before they deploy.”

“Right,” Grue replied.

“So. I expected a reply once you felt you were healed and ready for more work, or if you decided on a reply for my deal, but I got a sense this isn’t quite that.”

Tattletale spoke, “We can’t keep doing this, Coil.”

It was hard to tell, but I suspected that did something to knock Coil off his stride. “Hm. Elaborate?”

“We keep getting through these fights by the skin of our teeth. We’re not up to it. Just a few days after we helped take down the ABB, a situation that had two of our members facing down Lung and Oni Lee, we were up against the Protectorate, the Wards and Empire Eighty-Eight in the span of forty-eight hours. Even with your people and your powers to help, we’re not strong enough for this.”

“I see,” Coil turned to face the lower section of the sub-basement and look down at his people. He rested his hands on the railing, “Are you terminating our arrangement?”

Tattletale shook her head, “We’d rather not, but it depends on what we agree to here and now, in this meeting. We talked this over for the past week, and I’ll be blunt. The one person who wasn’t keen on taking your deal changed her mind, but the rest of us now have some serious reservations. And it’s not just the issue of our safety.”

Bitch shot Tattletale an irritated look, clearly unimpressed that Coil had been informed on our negotiations. Still, she gave him a response. “Decided it wouldn’t be so bad to get help with my dogs. I still think you’re full of shit, but way I see it, you can be as full of shit as you want, so long as I get what I want.”

“I suppose I’ll take what I can get.” Coil sighed a little, “Which leads me to our subject of discussion. Would I be right in assuming these reservations our Tattletale has mentioned have something to do with me, and how I operate?”

Grue and I both nodded.

“And you’re among these individuals with doubts, Tattletale?”

“Sorry. I’ve worked with you for a while now, I know what you can do, I even like and respect you. What you’re going for. But this last play of yours was fucked up on a lot of levels.”

“Yes,” Coil conceded, turning back towards us, “You’re right. Too heavy handed a maneuver. A tactical nuke where a rocket launcher might have sufficed, with undeserving parties suffering for being too close to the real targets.”

“Us, and the families of the members of Empire Eighty-Eight that you outed.”

Coil nodded, “So the two main points we need to discuss are the apparent carelessness of my maneuver against Empire Eighty-Eight, and the risk your group has been facing in the field. That said, if these issues are addressed in a satisfactory manner, would I be right in thinking you are prepared to accept my deal?”

Tattletale glanced at each of us, myself included, then told Coil, “Maybe.”

“Good. Shall we walk? I’ll be more able to answer your second concern when we get to the other side of this complex.” He stepped away from the railing and extended a hand, inviting us to join him. He walked with his hands clasped behind his back, leading us around the end of the room to the walkway opposite the one we’d traveled to reach him.

“First off, apologies are in order,” Coil spoke, “Your concern over the way I outed the Empire’s members is entirely deserved. In truth, it was a plan I had begun before I even knew of your existence, Undersiders. My initial attempts to divine the secret identities of my enemies were slow to bear fruit, and my hired men often underwent weeks of investigation only to find they had been barking up the wrong tree.

“For almost four years, I have invested funds and time in the possibility that I could find the weak point of my enemies: their civilian lives, the faces under the masks. For years, I was disappointed. In my early days, I had less money to fritter away, my facility with my own power was not what it is today, and many of the failures on these fronts were costly.

“As I began to amass my fortunes, this became easier. I could hire better investigators, pay the right people to divulge information and unseal court records. Pieces began falling into place. With my recruitment of Tattletale, I was able to avoid a number of wild goose chases. It was still slow, and the turnover rate of Empire Eighty-Eight was frustrating, especially as I aimed to have the complete picture, with no member of Kaiser’s empire left unmasked. My efforts with the local heroes were no better, if for different reasons.

“For some time, aside from regular payments and some direction, my attention was elsewhere. It was only two weeks ago that I was contacted by my investigators and told that I had what I wanted on Empire Eighty-Eight. To have it come together at that time, when the Empire was one of the sole barriers remaining before me, it seemed to be serendipity. I jumped on the opportunity.”

Grue spoke to Coil’s back, “And you forgot about us. What it might look like.”

Coil turned his head, “Yes. I’ll admit I am not proud of my failure to see the bigger picture, and I assure you, it is not a mistake I am prepared to make again.”

“That’s it? You say ‘I’m sorry’ and we’re just supposed to accept it?” Regent spoke for the first time since we’d arrived.

Coil stopped, and we were forced to stop or we would have walked right into him. He spoke, “If you accept my deal, I will undertake no plan of this scale without first consulting you, the Travelers and the independent villains that work for me. It is my hope that you would be able to inform me about any flaws or unintended consequences regarding my schemes.”

Grue unfolded his arms, “I can’t say for sure. Maybe.”

I spoke, “I like the idea, but no offense, I’m not sure I trust you that far. And don’t say that Tattletale would find out and tell us if you bent the rules and tried to slip something past us. She’s not infallible. Sorry, Tattle.”

Tattletale shrugged at that.

“I’ll leave you to think on the idea,” Coil spoke, “There’s no action or gesture I can really take that will earn your trust in one fell swoop. All I can do is to work with you, giving you no more reason to distrust me.”

“Sure,” I replied, noncommittal.

“Now, that leaves one us final issue to remedy. Your worries for your safety. I wish to show you that you are in good hands, and I’m prepared to reveal one of my secret weapons,” Coil came to a stop outside a door. A soldier stood nearby, smoking a cigarette.

“Fetch her,” Coil ordered. The soldier nodded, squashed the cigarette against the wall, pocketed the butt and went through the doorway.

Coil walked over to the wall where the soldier had extinguished the cigarette and used his thumb to wipe the smudge on the wall away. He spoke to us, “If I told you I knew where Kaiser was hiding out from the heroes, alongside his bodyguards and perhaps a handful of his lieutenants, that I wanted you to defeat them in a nighttime ambush, this would be an example of the sort of situation you’re concerned about facing?”

“Yep,” Tattletale replied, “Even with your power-”

“-You have your worries, yes,” Coil finished for her. “Forgive me if I do not elaborate on the subject of my abilities, or give Tattletale permission to do so. We- ah, here she is.”

The soldier came through the door, with a girl in tow. Twelve years old or so, she had dark circles under her eyes, and straight, dark brown hair that was in need of a trim. She wore a white long sleeved shirt, white pajama bottoms and white slippers. She didn’t make eye contact with anyone, staring at the ground. Her right hand gripped her left elbow, and the fingers of her left hand drummed an inconsistent beat against her thigh.

Coil bent down and pushed the hair away from the girl’s face. She looked at him, then looked away.

“I need some numbers,” Coil spoke, gently.

“I want candy.”

“Alright. Candy after six questions.”

“Three,” she grew more agitated, turned as if to walk away, then turned back in his direction. She was fidgeting more.

“Five questions. Is that fair?” Coil turned and sat on the metal walkway, beside where the girl stood.

“Okay. Five.”

“I’d like these people,” Coil pointed at us, “To go fight Kaiser, tomorrow night at eleven in the evening. You remember them? The Undersiders. And you remember Kaiser? From the pictures I showed you?”

“Yes. You asked me this before.”

“I did. But I want the Undersiders to hear what you say. Give me a number. How would they do, without my help?”

“Forty-six point six two three five four percent chance they all come back. Thirty three point seven seven nine zero one percent only some come back. That’s one question.”

Coil paused to let that sink in, then looked up at us, “She calculates possibilities, we think she does it by seeing all the potential outcomes of an event in a fraction of a second. Her power categorizes these outcomes and helps her to figure out the chance that a given event will come to pass. It isn’t easy for her, and I try not to tax her abilities, but you can surely see why this is so valuable.”

I hugged my arms close to my body. When I glanced at the girl, I caught her looking at me. I looked away.

“Candy, now?” She started to bite at her thumbnail. Looking at her other hand, I saw her nails were bitten to the quick.

He moved her hand away from her mouth, “Four more questions, pet, then candy. Tell me the numbers for the same situation, but if I sent the Travelers instead.”

“Sixty point two one zero zero nine percent chance they all come back. Forty-four point one seven four three percent chance but someone gets hurt or killed.”

“Good girl,” he turned to look at us, “The Travelers are powerful, so it stands to reason their chances are higher. But I’ve found that your group benefits more from a use of my power. Pet, tell me the numbers for the same scenario, for both the Travelers and the Undersiders, but let’s say I was helping them in my usual manner.”

“That’s two questions. Two teams, two questions. No cheating. I get really bad headaches when I try to get too many numbers.”

“Okay. Answer those two, then there’s one more before you get your candy. I just need to know the chances that the teams will come back intact.”

The girl nodded, a little too quickly and eagerly, “Those people there have a thirty-two point zero zero five eight three percent chance to come back with nobody dead or seriously hurt if you help them. The Travelers have a forty-one point-”

“No, stop,” Coil stopped her, “That doesn’t make any sense. You gave me different numbers before. Those numbers are lower than the ones they’d have if I didn’t help.”

“It’s the numbers in my head.”

“The numbers are wrong, pet.”

She shook her head, raised her voice in a surprisingly sudden fit of anger, “No! They’re right! You just don’t want to give me any candy!”

Coil put a hand on her shoulder. She pulled away, but he held her firm. He had to raise her voice to be heard over her squeals, and he shook her just a little to be sure she was listening, “Last question, then you’ll get your candy, I promise.”

She began to settle, and Coil was calmer when he spoke again, more like his usual, reasonable self, “Just give me the number, again, if I sent the Undersiders out to fight Kaiser, without giving them my help. What percentage, that they come back intact?”

“Twelve point three one three three percent-”

Coil stood, swiftly. He turned to the soldier that stood nearby, “Give her what she wants.”

The soldier guided the girl back through the door.

Coil muttered to himself, “There’s some anomaly at work, here. The numbers can’t skew that much, that fast. More than a thirty percent drop…”

“Coil?” Tattletale spoke. She looked a little pale.

“Tattletale, do you know why the numbers would change? Does your power tell you anything?”

She shook her head, started to speak, but was interrupted.

“Then go,” he ordered her, ordered us. “I will contact you later, and we will finish this conversation then.”

Tattletale nodded. Together, we headed around the walkway to the door we’d come in. We were halfway up the stairs to the hatch when Regent commented, “Well, that was surreal.”

“Not the word I’d use to describe it,” I replied, quiet.

“What’s her deal? Is she like Labyrinth? Powers fucked with her head?”

I looked at the others, then turned to look at him. I couldn’t help but let a little venom seep into my voice as I asked him, “Are you dense?”

“What? She said she got headaches, Coil said it was hard on her, using her power, it’s not a stretch of the imagination to think there’s something going on mentally, especially seeing how she acted.”

“The candy she was asking for was a euphemism for drugs,” I spoke, and saying it aloud made it somehow more real. I hugged my arms tighter against my body, “He’s keeping her strung out so she’ll cooperate, give him his numbers.”

He stopped. I looked at the others. Grue had his arms folded, and was standing very still. Bitch just had her usual angry look. Tattletale looked pale, even for the single lightbulb’s worth of light we had in the stairwell. She wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“You’d know if you watched the news,” I told Regent, “If you read the paper. I hate that I have to explain this, when I don’t even want to think about it. She’s the missing kid. Remember our bank robbery? How we were weren’t even front page news because an amber alert took priority? That was her. Dinah Alcott.”

The revulsion and anger that was welling up in my chest and throat made me want to throw up, hit something, right there. Some of that emotion, a lot of it, was directed at myself. I looked to Tattletale, “Tell me I’m wrong. Please?”

She broke eye contact, which was answer enough.

“Get it, Regent?” I asked him, “The bank robbery was a distraction for the local capes, so Coil could be sure to get away with taking the kid. We played a part in that. We made that happen.”

Leaping from rooftop to rooftop was not as awesome or efficient as it was on TV and in the movies. Even if it was the dogs doing the brunt of the work, they weren’t the most graceful of creatures, they weren’t built to be ridden, and we didn’t have any saddles. There was also the distinct issue of there being buildings of wildly varying heights, similar to how Brian’s neighborhood sported old Victorian style buildings amid apartments and condos. As Judas hopped down from the side of a six story building, dug his claws into the side of a neighboring building to slow his descent, then jumped the rest of the way down to the asphalt of an alleyway, I was genuinely concerned the landings would dislocate my hip.

In short, I was grateful to be back on terra firma.

“Need a hand!” Bitch called out, a moment after Brutus set down. She had a prone Tattletale lying across her lap and Brutus’ shoulders, and it looked like Tattletale was falling off, despite Bitch’s best efforts to hold on to her.

I reluctantly let go of Grue as he slipped down from Judas and rushed over to help. I silently lamented having included the panels of armor on my chest and stomach, which had been a solid barrier between my body and his back as I clung to him on our retreat from the Forsberg Gallery.

Whatever my regrets, I wasn’t oblivious to the matter at hand. I hopped down off Judas’ back and hurried over to help with Tattletale, just a step behind Grue. It proved easier to slide her down to the sidewalk than to get her back up onto Brutus’ back. Grue did the heavy lifting, while I focused on keeping her head and arms from hitting the ground or getting caught under her. As I bent down to help ease her to the ground, I could already feel the stiffness in the muscles of my thighs, back and stomach. I was glad I’d done my morning exercise earlier, because there was no way I was going to be able to go anywhere tomorrow.

I glanced around us. Cars were zipping past on the streets at either end, but there weren’t many pedestrians, and none appeared to have spotted us, thus far. My suspicions were that most people in the downtown area who were out and about would be near Lord Street, celebrating the end of the curfew. People would be acting out their relief over the end of the ABB situation, making up for time they’d spent cooped up in their homes during the six nights of curfew.

“Wait,” I told him. I reached back into my utility compartment and fished out the changepurse. I removed the tissues I’d wadded up inside to keep the change from rattling and found one of the three tiny white packets at the bottom of the bag. I tore the packet open and held it under Tattletale’s nose.

“Smelling salts?” Grue asked.

I nodded. “You asked if anyone had any after we put down Über and Leet. I made a mental note to have ’em for next time.”

“I bet half of us did,” Regent replied, “The weird thing is that you actually followed through, dork.”

“What’s weird about that?” I asked, a bit defensively.

He was distracted from replying. Tattletale stirred, turning her head to get her nose away from the smelling salts. I moved them back under her nose.

She woke, mumbling, “Okay, stop.”

“Welcome back,” Grue told her.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

“My stomach feels like someone ran it through a blender, and my arm hurts like hell, but I’m tougher than I look,” she said. Not one second later, she groaned and huffed out a breath, “But I’m going to need help to stand.”

Grue and I helped her. She was hurting, and moved at a glacial pace. It was made more difficult by the fact that she apparently didn’t want either of us to touch her right arm.

“What’d I miss?” she asked, as if to distract from the fact that she was moving like an old woman.

“Tee el dee arr, you got bitchslapped and knocked out, it was down to Bitch and Skitter, and we still got away,” Regent shrugged.

Tattletale froze in her tracks. Since Grue and I were still easing her to a standing position, I was forced to shift my grip to ensure she didn’t fall.

“Shit,” she managed to fit more invective into that one word than some of the people from my dad’s work could manage in ten, and some of those guys were seamen. Tattletale turned her head, “That’s not-”

“Not true,” Armsmaster spoke, echoing her words as he rounded the end of the alley.

He looked worse for wear. The lower half of his face had welts on it, not many, but some. I’d instructed the hornets to sting so they weren’t coiling their abdomens, which meant they weren’t squeezing the venom sacs and injecting venom with every sting. I’d only injected enough venom to make it hurt a little, to distract. After I’d beaten my retreat, though, I knew some would have stayed on him, and a few would have stung him after I was out of range and no longer able to control the hornets. The welts weren’t the bad part, though. What caught my eye, though, were the six thin trickles of blood running down the lower half of his face. Hornet bites weren’t necessarily capable of penetrating skin, as much as they might hurt, but there had been a lot of them, and if a few happened to bite in the same location, or if they caught the edge of an eyelid or nostril? Maybe. I noticed his Halberd in his right hand.

When I looked at our remaining escape route, Dauntless was at the other end of the alley. Brockton Bay’s rising star. It would have been easy to peg him as a tinker, but he apparently wasn’t. His power let him, according to details he’d leaked when he’d appeared on TV and in magazines, imbue his gear with a little bit of power every day. Thing was, every bit of power he parceled out had permanent effects. Every day, he was just a little bit stronger than he’d been the day before. A little bit more versatile. It was expected that he would eventually surpass even the likes of Alexandria, Legend and Eidolon, the ‘triumvirate’ of the Protectorate, the top dogs. That kind of made him a big deal in Brockton Bay, a hometown hero.

I didn’t follow that stuff, didn’t buy into the hero worship. I’d always found the capes interesting, I’d followed the non-gossipy news about them, but with the exception of a phase around the time I was nine where I’d had an Alexandria t-shirt and had my mom help me find pictures of her online, I had never really got giddy over any particular hero.

Dauntless packed a few trademark pieces of gear. He had his Arclance, a spear he held in one hand that looked like it was made of white lightning. His shield, fixed to his left forearm, was a metal disc about the size of a dinner plate, surrounded by rings of the same kind of energy that made up the spear. Finishing his current set of empowered items were his boots. His feet looked like they were encased in the white crackling energy. If rumor was to be believed, he was working on empowering his armor as well, but I couldn’t see any hints of that energy on the costume. It was white and gold, and his golden helmet was in the Greek or Spartan style, with slits for the eyes, a band of metal covering his nose, and a slit running down lower half of his face. A band of metal crested the top, like a mohawk.

You could see the frown crease Armsmaster’s damaged face as he turned his focus to me.

“I threw your Halberd off the side of the Gallery,” I spoke before he could. “Did Dauntless fetch it for you?”

He didn’t voice a reply right away. As if to demonstrate, he threw his Halberd straight up in the air. It disappeared into a storm of glowing blue lines as it reached the peak of its ascent, simultaneously rematerializing in his hand. Hadn’t I seen Kid Win bring his cannon to the site of the bank robbery in the same way? A piece of borrowed technology?

“I’m not about to put so many eggs in one basket without sufficient safeguards,” Armsmaster told me. His voice was tight with repressed anger.

No bugs. Damn it, I had no bugs, again. I’d emptied my armor of bugs when I attacked Armsmaster, and I’d left them and the rest of the swarm back at the Gallery when I made my retreat.

“Surrender,” he intoned.

“Thinking about it,” Tattletale spoke.

“Decide fast,” Armsmaster growled.

“Why did you guys stop here?” Tattletale murmured to us, “We’re, like, half a block from the parking garage where we stashed our ride.”

“I wanted to make sure there were no pursuers before we peeled out,” Grue replied, “Good thing, too.”

“Right,” Regent’s voice was thick with sarcasm, “Because this is so much better than them finding us as we put the key in the ignition.”

“Get to the parking garage,” She hissed through her teeth, as Armsmaster took a step forward.

The alley was wide enough for two dogs to stand shoulder to shoulder, and I saw Bitch directing two of the animals to stand between us and Armsmaster before Grue blanketed everything but Armsmaster and the dogs in darkness.

The darkness didn’t last more than three seconds. There was enough time for Grue to place his arm against my collarbone and shove me back against the wall, and then he removed the darkness around us. There was a smell like burning ozone. Had Dauntless used his spear?

It was immediately clear that Dauntless didn’t have much darkness around him. He was holding his shield arm up, and it had formed into a bubble-shaped forcefield, extending in a ten foot radius around himself, touching both walls on either side of us. The forcefield was serving to block off the darkness, and while I wasn’t sure, I suspected that the field was actually eating through any darkness that touched it. It was making a continual sizzling, crackling sound that drowned out the traffic on the roads around us.

Dauntless advanced a pace, and the forcefield moved a corresponding distance closer to us.

After a second short advance from Dauntless, Grue had to back up a step to avoid touching the field of crackling white energy. A step that closed the distance between us and Armsmaster.

“Armsmaster hates you,” Tattletale told Dauntless, raising her voice to be heard over the crackling sound the forcefield was generating, “He hates that you’re the next big thing, the guy that’s going to be better than him. That you get the easy road to being a big name in the Protectorate, and he’s the one that has to stay up nights, reworking his stuff, compiling simulations, coming up with new ideas, training in the gym for hours and hours on end. Every second of work he puts in, he gets more and more resentful of you. Why do you think you were the one member of the team he sent off to patrol the city and watch over the Wards, instead of having you come to the party?”

Dauntless shook his head. Then he raised his spear hand and tapped one finger against the side of his helmet.

Dauntless advanced two steps, quickly, and all of us, excepting Bitch and Angelica, were in a position where we had to hurry to step back. Regent was too slow, and his hand touched the bubble. A brief arc of energy traced from the field to Regent’s hand as he pulled it back.

“Fuck! Ow!” Regent gasped. “Enough of this shit!”

He raised his other hand, and Dauntless stumbled. Regent then brushed his hand to one side, and Dauntless fell. As Dauntless used both hands to ease his fall, the forcefield dropped away.

“Go!” Grue bellowed, dismissing his darkness. Bitch whistled twice, hard, and the two dogs that were fighting Armsmaster hurried to follow.

Dauntless raised his spear to impede us. Grue, leading our retreat, leaped over the crackling beam of lightning and brought both feet down on Dauntless’ helmet as he landed. The hero didn’t recover before we were over and past him.

We were free of the alley. Two of the dogs surged past us, getting in the way of incoming traffic so we were clear to cross the street. Cars squealed to a stop as we moved.

We’d just crossed the threshold of the parking garage when Dauntless opened fire, striking Brutus no less than three times with jabs of his Arclance, then turning his attention to Angelica. The weapon could extend as far as he needed, elongating faster than the eye could follow. White sparks flew as it slammed into the animals, but the effect was minor at best. The Arclance was something between a solid and an energy, combining traits of both. It could hit hard enough, with an electrical charge to it to boot, but I suspected that using it on the dogs wasn’t so different from using a hand taser on a bull elephant. They were too big, too tough.

Finding he wasn’t having much effect on the animals, Dauntless aimed for us.

Regent disrupted Dauntless’ aim, and the Arclance ripped over the windows of the building above the parking garage, bringing a rain of glass shards down on us as we made our way past the gate and into the garage.

Armsmaster exited the alley and spotted us. Intent on closing the distance, he sent his grappling hook out to catch the metal ‘do not pass if you are above this height’ bar above the door of the parking garage. The second the points of the hook closed around the bar, Armsmaster started reeling himself in, his metal boots skidding across the roadtop.

Bitch whistled, hard, and pointed to the bar. Judas lunged for it, catching both bar and grappling hook in his jaws. The chain holding the bar up snapped as Judas pulled, and Armsmaster’s skid was interrupted as Judas pulled back on the chain that extended between them.

Armsmaster shifted to a run, managing to keep his feet under him as his trajectory changed. He extended his stick arm, and I saw a spray of blood fly from Judas’ mouth, the dog rearing back in reaction. Judas let go of both the bar and the hook and backed away several paces, growling. As the hook retreated, I saw it wasn’t in its grappling hook form, but the usual halberd-top, complete with blade, spearpoint, and no small amount of blood.

Armsmaster maintained his momentum, finished reeling in, then send the ball out again, his weapon back in flail-style. He brought Judas down, then brought the flail in a wide sweep to keep the other two dogs at bay. Dauntless continued his approach, stopping just behind and to the side of Armsmaster.

“My mapping program says there’s three ways out of this garage,” Armsmaster informed us, “The doors on the other two exits are locked, and I guarantee you won’t have time to crack the lock or break down the door before I catch up with you. No more tricks, no more-”

He stopped mid-sentence, whipped his head to one side, then the other. “Wha-”

And then he disappeared.

A yellow painted concrete pillar, the sort that was used to keep cars from parking in front of the stairwell doors, or to protect the ticket vending machine from any collisions, appeared in his place. It hit the ground hard, then toppled onto its side. At the same time, we heard a series of heavy collisions from behind us.

A steel giant with massive hands and a spout on its back that was spewing volumes of gray-black smoke had one hand closed around Armsmaster. Repeatedly, methodically, it slammed Armsmaster against the hood of a car.

Ballistic, with his football player build and angular body armor, stepped out of the shadows between the cars to Dauntless’ left, just by the entrance. A girl I recognized but hadn’t yet seen in person emerged from the right. She wore clown makeup and a jester’s cap, with a teal and orange skintight costume complete with coattails. Bells jangled from the tips of her cap, her coattails, her gloves and boots. Circus. Her costume, makeup and color scheme were different every time she went out, but the theme was always more or less the same.

Dauntless moved to retreat, but Sundancer intercepted him, stepping around the front of the building and placing her miniature sun in the center of the entryway to bar exit.

I didn’t have enough bugs to contribute, and had too little of an idea of what was happening, besides, so I stayed put and watched as the rest of the scene unfolded with surprising speed.

Armsmaster fought his way out from the giant metal hand, but found himself dealing with not just the machine, but a creature from the black lagoon, replete with crustacean armor and octopus tentacles in the place of arms and a face. He managed to fend them off for a few brief moments, until he swung his weapon at the octopus creature and wound up with a car bumper in the place of the Halberd. He didn’t have a grip on the bumper as it materialized, so he fumbled and dropped it. Before he could recover from his surprise or his lack of a weapon, he found himself caught in the mechanical hand. The steam powered giant resumed his methodical thrashing of Armsmaster against the now-battered car, with the octopus-crab man standing patiently by.

Circus threw a handful of knives at Dauntless, only to have them deflected when he encapsulated himself in his forcefield-bubble. The second the bubble went up, though, I saw Ballistic reach down to touch the car parked beside him. When he used his power on the car, you didn’t see it move. Rather, in the blink of an eye, it was gone from where it had been, abruptly in a position where it was virtually wrapped around the upper half of the forcefield. It started rolling off the other side before the forcefield gave way, then dropped to the ground a scant foot from Dauntless.

Circus hadn’t stopped moving. As the car hit the ground, her feet found positions on the undercarriage, and she was up and over, leaping toward Dauntless. She brought her hands back, and at some point I couldn’t see her hands, she got a two-handed grip on a large, colorfully painted sledgehammer, colored streamers trailing from it as she swung it in Dauntless’ direction.

Circus was one of those capes that had a whole pile of very minor powers. The ones I knew about were some minor pyrokinesis, the ability to deposit items into thin air, to retrieve those items just as easily, and greatly enhanced coordination and balance to round off the package. She was one of the more successful solo villains around Brockton Bay, a burglar and thief both quick and versatile enough to win or slip away if she crossed paths with a hero. If I remembered right, she’d been offered a position on the Undersiders and had vehemently refused.

Which raised the question of what she was doing here, with the Travelers.

Dauntless parried Circus’ sledgehammer with his Arclance, and the Sledgehammer was gone in the next second, as though it had never existed. At some point in the meantime, though, she’d managed to slip a lit torch into one hand. She raised it to her mouth, and blew a large cone of flame in Dauntless’ direction.

He staggered back from the torrent of flame, raised his shield, and widened it into a forcefield bubble again. Less than a second after the shield went up, Ballistic sent another car flying into it with enough force that the car rebounded into the ceiling, back to the ground and into the other side of the parking garage. The shield failed, flickering out of existence, and Dauntless reeled.

Circus took the chance to close in, torch gone, sledgehammer out. What followed was a brutal takedown, as Circus swung the sledgehammer twice, making it disappear rather than heftting it back for the next swing, which made the assault that much more relentless. She ducked low to avoid his Arclance, then spun in a tight circle as she sidestepped around him. As she rotated her body, the sledgehammer made an appearance once more. She carried through with the spin with the weapon in hand, driving it hard against the center of Dauntless’ armored chest.

Dauntless fell, and the conflict was abruptly over, silent but for the crackle of Sundancer’s miniature sun, and a single honking horn outside.

The two giants, the machine and bizarre sea creature, approached us, with Trickster lagging behind them. I could see the machine-guy’s face, a heavy cheeked caucasian with acne-scarred cheeks and long hair pulled back into a greasy ponytail, the upper half of his face covered in a metal mask and goggles, and now I could place him. He was Trainwreck, a fairly thuggish villain that hadn’t made much of a name for himself. I couldn’t say whether that was a suit or actually his body. For all I knew, he was some sort of coal-driven cyborg, or an unfortunate individual that’d been transformed by his powers much in the same way Newter and Gregor had.

And of course, that left the odd one out, the sea-creature, who could only be Genesis, from the Travelers.

Trainwreck dumped a beaten and bloodied Armsmaster to the ground, beside Dauntless. He took a second to examine the Halberd, which he held in his other hand, and then snapped it in his hands and squeezed the remains in his metal fist. He dumped the resulting debris over the unconscious heroes.

I looked across the assembled group. The Travelers and two villains that had never, as far as I knew, been on a team. Nobody was saying anything.

A smooth, self assured voice broke the silence. “I assumed, Tattletale, that when you asked to meet with me at the conclusion of your task, that you wouldn’t be bringing the heroes with you.”

A soldier in kevlar and a black balaclava was holding the stairwell door open for Coil. Dressed in the same black bodysuit with the image of a white snake arranged across it, Coil joined us, walking slowly, his hands clasped behind his back, taking in the scene with an appraising eye. Two soldiers followed behind him, guns in hand.

Coil. I felt my pulse quicken.

Tattletale made a pained expression. “Sorry.”

Coil glanced around some more, then seemed to come to a decision, “No. I don’t think there’s anything to apologize for.”

He paused, and all I could think was this is it. I’ve got what I need.

Coil spoke, more as though he were musing to himself than any of us, “I was feeling theatric. The plan was for the Travelers, Circus and Trainwreck to step out from the shadows as I made an impressive entrance. A shame it didn’t play out, but I suppose it had a tactical benefit.”

“Guess so,” Tattletale grinned.

“Well, it seems you were successful tonight. Good. There are no more pursuers?”

“Nope.”

“Emergency response? Other heroes?”

“All at least two and a half minutes away, I think.”

“Then we’ll take our leave. Undersiders, Trickster, I have a ride prepared, and I would like you to join me. I believe we have much to discuss.”